Of course, aesthetics, but also resilience and the common good, are at the heart of Pierre Thibault's reflection on buildings. In a second essay about beauty, the architect conducts a dialogue with presenter and musician Catherine Perrin about the relationship that connects people with their environment.
Published at 1:13 am. Updated at 1:00 p.m.
“Living in Beauty – These places that are good for us” is the sequel to “And if beauty made you happy,” a dialogue exercise presented in 2016 by Pierre Thibault and François Cardinal, now vice president and editor of La Press. This time it is Catherine Perrin who leads the architect in discovering inspiring and calming places, largely, but not only, her projects.
For a year, the tandem visited places designed in different contexts and met their residents and visitors there. After building his practice around residential architecture, Pierre Thibault and his team devote themselves more and more to projects of collective benefit, such as the Lab-école, including the first establishment to emerge from it, the Stadacona School, presented in the book.
The essay begins with the Grantham Foundation for Art and the Environment, an artists' residence and exhibition space immersed in nature, built on stilts to protect the trees that “reach out their arms to us,” writes Catherine Perrin. “The form of a project is in dialogue with the sky and the nature that surrounds it,” emphasizes Pierre Thibault. She maintains a beneficial relationship with her body and must avoid unnecessary chatter that trivializes everything. »
For the architect, the goal is not to disrupt the landscape but to complete it.
Jardins de Métis, Sainte-Anne College, Maison Resther, Faculty of Music at Laval University: the authors take us to different places that have in common the ability to arouse strong feelings. Feeling is at the heart of the story, which is accompanied not by photographs but by sketches reminiscent of the buildings and musical interludes chosen by Catherine Perrin.
At the very end of the book, on the land of Laure Waridel and Bruce Johnston in Frelighsburg, where an intergenerational house signed by Pierre Thibault is being built, and in the streets of the transformed Parisian district of Clichy-Batignolles, this thinking becomes more intensely interesting.
How can we build and develop cities to meet the climate challenges that await us? Rejecting “wall-to-wall” solutions, the architect puts forward the idea of an urban laboratory in which five communities in need of renewal will be offered an overall vision, tailored to each community by experts from different fields. According to Pierre Thibault, a rethink in cities means densification, creating space for nature through the development of parks and courtyards. After the school laboratory, the Urban Lab?
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“What decisions will we make for the future? Money and speed have long been the drivers of development in our cities, and everything shows that our quality of life has suffered as a result. By replacing money and speed with life and time, the way we build and live will make all the difference. »
Who are Pierre Thibault and Catherine Perrin?
Renowned architect Pierre Thibault is founder of Atelier Pierre Thibault and professor at the School of Architecture at the University of Laval. Over the course of his career, he received nearly thirty honors and awards in Quebec, Canada, the United States and Europe, including the Ernest Cormier Prize, awarded by the Government of Quebec.
Presenter, author and harpsichordist Catherine Perrin is the author of one story (A Discreet Woman) and two novels (Three Awakenings and The Age of Accidents). She hosts the show Feu vert on ICI Première.
Life in beauty
Editions La Presse
272 pages