Michel Rémon seen by Bernard Desmoulin at the Academy of Architecture
Reception at the Academy of Architecture
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Michel Rémon was inducted member of the Académie d'Architecture on 21st May 2015, in the Charles Garnier group.
Our thanks to Bernard Desmoulin architect for his excellent introduction:
"It is with great pleasure I introduce our colleague Michel Rémon and welcome him to the Académie d’Architecture which, incidentally, awarded him a Medal of Honour in 2008.
Before starting this rather brief portrait, I would like to cite a quotation that I borrow occasionally from Michel, of course always crediting him as its author, when he mischievously replies to those who think that tastes and colours are not open to discussion "Very well! I have indeed a degree in taste and colour".
Under the glass roof of the Grand Palais, Michel Rémon graduated in 1977 from UP7 at the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Paris. Preceding me by a few semesters, Michel was a senior student whose instructive research on the façade épaisse and bioclimatic urban architecture was a fertile complement to the teaching of Henri Ciriani.
Michel finalised this research ahead of time with two studies published by Plan Construction, before implementing them on his first commissions. Project manager for 63 housing units by Henrik Lassen located in the Nord, he experimented with the theme of the façade épaisse. Based on the belief that the sun’s course permits a north-orientated main elevation, the project studied heliotropism within the dense urban fabric, another common theme in his projects.
Attributed the 1981 Albums des Jeunes Architects award, Michel founded his practice in 1984 - Atelier Michel Rémon - which soon after won several major design competitions for university projects. On the Cergy Pontoise new town campus, the Université des Chênes earnt him a nomination for the Equerre d'Argent award and the Val d'Oise Conseil Général architecture award.
Developing successively four buildings on the campus at the beginning of the 21st century, Michel made a decisive contribution to the impact of the university on urban development. Another important project early in his career is the Ecole Nationale Supérieure d’Arts et Métiers in Metz (1994-97) with the jagged geometry of its north-facing zenithal roof that provides workshops with optimum light conditions.
Beyond the built envelope - space, scale and proportion guide his hand. Other important themes: the relationship with the ground and the sky; the development of space by the combination of opacities and transparencies; and roof art that draws horizontals and ridges on the horizon. In Torcy, within a wooded landscape along the banks of the Marne, a leisure centre is expressed as a thin white line in the valley surrounded by hills.
Located in the Cité de l’Ameublement, Michel Rémon leads a team of about forty people who knew how to consolidate his reputation among the main French practices.
An architect in the noblest sense of the term, Michel also has the spirt of a business leader. Very attached to the concept of the Atelier with a very practical approach to the design of the project, he developed the practice to access complex and often prestigious large-scale programmes: the Reims Stadium, hospitals, universities, research laboratories, tertiary facilities and infrastructure. Able to approach large scales and vast regions, he likes to compare the Villeneuve Saint-Georges Pôle Mère Enfant to the Christ in Rio de Janeiro with his arms outstretched onto the immensity of a megalopolis. “Unique and emblematic for both its location and functions”, this haven of relief “rises up in the middle of its suburbs like the cathedral in the heart of cities of the past. On the site of the Edouard Henriot Hospital in Lyon, Michel was confronted with the extent of an urban scale.
Through exceptional programmes, each project is a complex human and cultural adventure in terms of its technicality, functionality, history and architectural interpretation. The police forensic laboratory in Ecully (2000) and the CNRS nanoscience centre in Saclay both testify to this approach.
If Michel Rémon's exemplary career is representative of public commissions in particular, his success and a fine series of built projects now enable him to undertake equally exciting private commissions which, in turn, open up a new field of research and experimentation. In 2014, the Airbus Helicopters research & development centre in Marignane provides open spaces attached to a full-scale model workshop. Further, the Institut National de l’Énergie Solaire (INES) in Chambéry optimises energy performance due to a solar air conditioning system. Not to forget his project for the Air Liquide research laboratory in Saclay, commissioned July 2014, with the landscape architect Laure Planchais and the environment office Tribu.
Alongside these well-known projects, Michel Rémon has taught in several schools of architecture. He was also an architect advisor to the Ministère de l’Equipement and consultant to the Mission Interministérielle pour la Qualité des Constructions Publiques (MIQCP).
Concerned by the durability of his architecture, a tireless collector of images of windows, fascinated by walls since his youth, Michel always refers back to the frame, in turn evoking the sumptuous vantage points provided by the windows of the Villa Malaparte in Capri and De pictura by Alberti. To conclude, I recall that he also likes to cite among his references: the church of Aulnay de Saintonge with its wall imbued with light and the skilful mechanics of its embrasures, industrial cathedrals and many anonymous constructions anchored within their regions.
Michel Remon is a real architect His force is to continue his engagement by working at exceptional scales, where others could lose their soul. He is not jaded, he is not worn out, he has kept a virginity of thought and curiosity and, above all, his enthusiasm despite the blows dealt.
Michel is an activist with a smile."
Bernard Desmoulin
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Speech By Michel Rémon at the Académie d'Architecture :
Thank you for your warm welcome. On this occasion, I would like to make quick three points.
First is my pleasant surprise of being inducted in the “Charles Garnier” group - one of the architects I admire the most. The architecture of Charles Garnier is Art Total. To produce the Opéra de Paris, Garnier called upon all the artistic disciplines of his time. It’s a sublime expression of the “ système des Beaux-Arts Français”. It’s a very Plastic, very Physical, very Sensual architecture. An architecture that speaks to the whole body. It’s an architecture that beautifully applied, long before the modern movement, the notion of the "promenade architectural” as a way of designing space, in plan and section.
I believe we spoke of “walking through” a building. I should add, it was the Opéra Garnier that helped me fully understand the word "space". No teacher had conveyed that to me.
Second, to say how amazed I am, every time I come here, to see so many passionate, committed personalities - so many who devote their lives to architecture - I insist - dedicated. I'm even more surprised to discover how much these many commitments - our commitments - which we express in a very similar way, in fact refer to extremely different ways of practicing our profession - to produce architecture.
Every day I discover that each of us has invented our own way of being an architect ... This diversity is disturbing.
There are many reasons for this diversity. There is the passage of time, the commission which constantly takes new forms, the changing regulatory context, the constantly improved drawing tools and, above all, there is also the programmes that we deal with which are getting more complicated by the day.
We need to deploy multiple skills to work with other designers. Working with landscape architects, engineers, lighting designers, environmental specialists, acousticians, researchers who will bring alive built spaces, etc... and then also, increasingly with specialist consultants, to operate the architectural machines we build. Some projects require us to combine our skills as architects. I learnt a lot with Henrik Lassen, Frédéric Nicolas, Jean Philippe Pargade and François Chatillon...
Thanks to you all. We share a common objective.
To build the projects you see here - little by little, I built now a 40-strong architectural practice. This 30-year adventure has only been possible through the desire, commitment and enthusiasm of other architects who shared and still share this adventure with me. I mention here only the older ones: Marie Claude Richard, Cyril Doye, Florence Desnot, Geraldine Maurice, Sami Zarkout, Jean Paul Bertrand, Radu Vilara, Eric Fressancourt along with many others. Together, we have faced many challenges, experienced lots of joy but also shared many doubts...
We did this together... and we intend to continue our shared adventure for a long time yet to come.
I should also say that every day we have the impression of at last beginning to understand how to design - how to build.
To conclude, I would like to tell you about my collection of windows - drawings, photographs, engravings, photocopies, built ones... These are at the heart of my research, and my doubts. In piles of boxes, I’ve collected several thousand windows... My favourites are the ones you look out of from the inside... But it would take too long to tell you all about that here. It’s easier to read a short passage from The Skin (La pelle) by Malaparte - Curzio Malaparte.
“One day in Capri, my faithful house-keeper Maria came to tell me that a German general, accompanied by his aide-de-camp, was in the hall and wanted to visit the house. It was the spring of 1942, shortly before the Battle of El Alamein. My leave permission expired the next day and I had to leave for Finland.
(...)
So, I went to meet the German general and had him enter my library. It was Marshal Rommel. Looking at my chasseur alpin uniform, he asked me on which front I was.
“On the Finland front,” I replied.
- “I envy you“, he said to me, “I suffer from the heat. In Africa, it's far too hot.“
With a smile mingled with sadness, he took off his hat, passing his hand over his forehead. I saw with amazement that he had a very odd-shaped skull: one of disproportionate height, or to put it better, elongated upwards, similar to a huge yellow pear.
I accompanied him from one room to another throughout the house, from the library to the cellar, and when we returned to the huge hall with large bay windows opening onto the most beautiful and purest landscape in the world, I offered him a glass of Vesuvian wine from the vineyards of Pompeii.
"Prosit", he said raising his glass.
He finished in one gulp, then before leaving, asked me if I had bought an existing house or if I had designed and built it myself. I replied - and it wasn’t true - that I had bought my house as-built. And showing him, with a slow and wide gesture, the sheer cliff of the Matromania, the three gigantic Faraglioni outcrops, the Sorrento peninsula, the islands of Sirens, the blue, green and purple of the Amalfi Coast and over there, in the distance,
the golden brilliance from the shore of Paestum, I said to him:
“I only designed the landscape. »
Thank you