A word from Mehrad Sarmadi, co-founder of the Claude Parent Prize: 
 

“I hope that you will believe in something, and not merely collect knowledge. You can only step out of line if you have a deeply-rooted sense of the unprovable and, if you wish to go all the way, hold tight to that inner fire, by which I mean faith, fervor, impetus.

…Of you, I ask but one thing: flee the plague of our times, which is to want to be loved by all, to please everyone, attract fans… On the day you are applauded by a large audience, you can tell yourself that you have just made a big mistake.”

Régis Debray *

 

Dear readers and fellow architects, I am delighted to be here with you.

If I had been told that we would meet again one day, and that I would even help to create an architectural award… I, who was often criticized by Claude Parent for “having forgotten all about architecture, for having put it to the side, and setting out to make money”. Well, I can now say – and I hope he forgives me – that he was wrong on both accounts. He was wrong, but he knew it. “Schein and I were Sarmadi in the nineteen fifties. Despite the very small size of the audience, we always shone with muted anger. It’s good to see that the next generation is there… I can die in peace…” ** This is the type of comment, almost an injunction, which sooner or later forces you to commit, especially when they come from a master and friend.

This will be nothing new to you. The life of an architect, like any life, actually, is made of ups and downs, intense experiences, good times and bad, and then all the rest. Only a handful can brush aside the rest and afford themselves the luxury of living only the ups and downs, intense experiences, and the good times and bad.

To those, we wish you a very warm welcome. This is your home.

And since we are among ourselves, I might say a couple of words on the purpose of this competition. Although transgression is the visible title, transmission is no doubt the hidden driver.

For a long time, I believed that transgression as the idea of opposition seemed to suffice in itself. You can make a whole life out of playing the opponent. A life that begins and ends adolescently is one that so many architects have made their own. Thirty years ago, I would admire them, today I find them boring. Overrated, hackneyed but above all sterile, transgression is vain and pointless if it offers no perspective, no pathway along which we may move ahead, step by step. A side step that leads nowhere is basically just another facet of idleness, the other facet of conformity. I might as well warn you now, don’t count on us to defend such an easy position.
 

Transmission is the hidden driver that has gathered us here today, but it is above all a reminder of our duty to remember and a gamble, that of doing at least as well as our masters and predecessors. Of course, wagering on transgression is increasingly difficult and is disappearing fast, but what does that matter? Little by little, the construction is taking form, in the likeness of a tradition, loyalty to a lineage and high standards. Following in Claude Parent's radical and subversive footsteps may not guarantee mainstream success, but it does help to build a body of work, to regain momentum, which may sometimes falter, but then picks up again from time to time. I’m glad to see you taking part.

 

                                                                                                                     Mehrad Sarmadi***

 

* Régis Debray, Bilan de faillite, Gallimard, 2018

** Claude Parent, Portraits d’architectes, Editions Norma, 2005

*** Largely borrowed from Nicolas Rey, Un léger passage à vide, Au diable Vauvert, 2010 et Régis Debray, Propos divers…

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A word from Chloé Parent, co-founder of the Claude Parent Prize: 
 

On the back cover of The Architecture of Transgression*, authors Jonathan Mosley and Rachel Sara give this definition of transgressive architecture:

“Transgression suggests operating beyond accepted norms and radically reinterpreting practice by pushing at the boundaries of both what architecture is and what it could or even should be. The current economic crisis and accompanying political/social unrest have exacerbated the difficulty into which architecture has long been sliding: challenged by other professions and a culture of conservatism, architecture is in danger of losing its prized status as one of the preeminent visual arts. Transgression opens up new possibilities for practice. It highlights the positive impact that working on the architectural periphery can make on the mainstream, as transgressive practices have the potential to reinvent and reposition the architectural profession: whether they are engaging with conceptual art; pioneering urban interventions; advocating informal development; breaking barriers of taste; shifting between research and practice or creating critical projects.”

We believe that this definition corresponds to the foundations that we find in the architecture and thought of Claude Parent. Repositioning the architectural profession, fighting the culture of conservatism, reinventing architecture, making unprecedented urban interventions, destabilizing environments, provoking mutations: these positions were dear to Claude Parent. Throughout his life, these actions, vital in his practice of architecture, motivated and guided him. Faced with criticism, mockery and resistance from a world too often reproducing its past, he never gave up questioning architecture, or risking his own reputation, opening the door to a new architecture freed from the sclerosis of classicism and modernist Cartesianism.

 

This is why, in his honor and in the spirit of his complete commitment to architecture, we created the Claude Parent Prize for transgressive architecture. But this prize is not only a tribute prize to honor or perpetuate his memory. It is intended to be an inspiration, an encouragement, an engine for change, and for the winner, recognition of their own commitment. Its primary purpose is to show young architects and students that any research, and in particular marginal research, can generate new fertile avenues leading to a change in our built, social, or even natural environment, and therefore in our lives. This audacity, this temerity, this rebellion are necessary in a profession which loses the taste for risk and questioning, is afraid of questioning itself, avoids marginality, and tends to retreat more and more towards the comfort of doctrine.

 

The Claude Parent Prize will therefore reward an architect or studio that has shown in their architectural practice and philosophy a desire to rethink architecture in a transgressive, critical, or pioneering way. We want to recognize their courage, the consistency of their risk-taking, the intelligence and relevance of their vision, or their unique contribution to architecture. And this internationally, opening up a world of possibilities. Whether their reflection comes from the refusal of the status quo, from the desire to find new configurations for architecture and urbanism, or from that of responding to the current or future problems of the world, these architects will have brought something essential to their discipline, turning it upside down and creating alternative paths that hold promise for us all.

 

To use the words of Claude Parent at the end of his book Errer dans L’illusion:
If you want to go high, and see the world from above in its entirety without losing the earthly sensations of walking in the soil, then be an architect.

    Practice research, pursue the imagination.

    Venture into theory, stay awake in your dreams, leave the two plus two makes four to others, prefer chaos.

    Work in illusion.

    You will undoubtedly wander in this area for many years, you will exhaust yourself moving stubborn mountains, you will often doubt your sanity, but at the end of your wandering, you will find your home, your mythical castle, and through the door yawning, you will enter the architecture standing up: this place inaccessible to ordinary mortals.

    Others have power, money, pleasure, glory, happiness, you have nothing, but you are the source of liberation in the way of living and thinking.

    You will be mobile, you will move what cannot move, you will cross the Mediterranean, you will topple all the citadels, you will make the broken surface of the planet continuous, then fracture it according to your desires, you will practice turning upside down, you will love the fragment much more than the whole, you will be an architect…

    Good luck.

 

* ARCHITECTURAL DESIGN magazine n° 226 (November/December 2013) “The architecture of transgression”

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