The architecture of Claude Parent and the architecture of the Viennese firm Coop Himmelb(l)au come together in the plan to redevelop the Francis-Poulenc site in Tours, where a center for contemporary arts, an auditorium-theater and a national conservatory for the region were on the drawing board. To achieve their aim of creating experimental architecture and pushing the limits – of light, weightlessness and space – the architects decided to base their work on a children’s game much experimented with by the Surrealists: the Exquisite Corpse (similar to the idea behind the old parlor game of Consequences). Once the main lines had been sketched out, they merely had to work on the program, using a model to imagine it in three-dimensions. Beyond the proposal, which recalls Parent’s 1970s drawings for oblique cities, as well as the “automatic architecture” of Wolf Prix and Helmut Swiczinsky for the Open House (1983), this set of drawings illustrates what would have been a totally unique architectural experience.
Audrey Jeanroy
