B. L'arbre-roi
Green card given to Dominique Perrault
“Charles Perrault spent a long time on the banks of the River Loire. What we have imagined is not a homage to the legendary storyteller, but rather a nod in his direction.
So, we will try to cast a magical spell over the grounds, in keeping with the fabulous world, by draping one of its subjects with a robe in the colours of time. It is unique to this place and we have called it the Tree-King.
The Tree-King is not the most majestic in terms of its size, but it is just right in terms of its position. So, we will have to search for it, in order to identify it and adorn it.
In the image of the famous Medici robes, strips of golden metallic fabric will be attached under the crown of the tree, so that it then follows the trunk down, flaring out and extending like a carpet over the ground.
This installation highlights the vital relationship between what is underground (the root system) and what is in the air (the crown of the tree), between the visible and the invisible.
“You have to know how to blossom where God planted you,” said the Prophet. So, wherever we come from in terms of our roots, we will blossom.
The suit of light is a marvellous symbol of what made us, between the natural and the artificial, between the wild and the cultivated, that is an aesthetic emotion, a poetic breath…” D. Perrault
DESIGNER
Dominique Perrault favours constructions that are integrated into their environment. He designs buildings based on a vocabulary of simple, almost minimalist forms, where empty and silent spaces have as much importance as “occupied” spaces.
“One day, artists announced the death of art; it is time that architects gave form to the disappearance, dissolution and erasing of architecture, in favour of a look which blends and entangles town and nature, to put a landscape in place that is free of any exclusions, made of everything and for everyone, a positive chaos.” Dominique Perrault
Dominique Perrault is a French architect and town planner, born in Clermont-Ferrand in 1953, who studied architecture at theNational Higher Institute for Fine Arts in Paris, town planning at the National Higher Institute for Civil Engineering and finally history at the National Higher Institute for Social Sciences; In 1981, he founded his own agency in Paris, Dominique Perrault Architecture.
In 1984, he created the School for Information and Communication Sciences and Technologies Engineers in Marne-la-Vallée, his first noteworthy building. In 1989, he won the competition to create the François Mitterrand Library in Paris, which also won him the Mies van der Rohe Prize in 1997. In 1990, he received the “Equerre d’Argent” [Silver Set Square] for the Berlier “hôtel industriel” [industrial business centre] in Paris, where he then set up his offices.
In 1992, he won the competition to build Berlin’s Velodrome and Olympic Swimming Pool and he opened another agency there. For these buildings he won 2nd prize in the Deutscher Preis für Architektur [German Architecture Awards] in 1999. Dominique Perrault won the top national award for architecture in 1993 and also designed the European Communities Court of Justice in Luxembourg along with the Ewha Women’s University in Seoul in Korea (2008). The first received the distinguished European Steel Design Awards Prize in 2009. That same year, the second project was acknowledged by being given the Green Good Design, Environment / Landscape Architecture Award.
In 2008, the Pompidou Centre devoted a large-scale exhibition to the French architect for the first time in France.
He was the commissioner for the French pavilion at the 2010 Venice International Biennale of Architecture on the “Metropolis” theme.
