«SALLE BLANCHE» Christian Dupraz
«SALLE BLANCHE»
Exhibition / Contemporary Art Building (BAC) / Geneva / 30.08 - 23.09 2012
«GUNITE OVER ?» Christian Dupraz / a-editions.ch / © 2013 / 96 pages 130X190 mm / (french – english) / ISBN 978-2-9700920-0-1
«SALLE BLANCHE» Christian Dupraz
Exhibition / Bâtiment d’art contemporain (BAC) / Geneva
The "Salle Blanche" (White hall) exhibition questions the notion of process and this fragile moment when the desire of an idea appears. Thought of as a "territory" consisting of architectural experiences in opposition to the world of efficiency, here lies an opportunity to develop the expression of one or more investigations and verify their essence without the constraint of its outcome.
The display revolves around a full-scale model "EPURE ♯1", a geometrized architecture created by Christian Dupraz, which expresses the location, the route and transport; as well a selection of films highlighting the first significant architectural attempts by singular authors at the origin of this departure from the standards imposed by a standardised architecture such as (Pascal Häusermann (1936-2011), Jean Renaudie (1925-1981), Claude Parent (1923), Cedric Price (1934-2003), Hans-Walter Müller (1935), André Bloc ...).
Christophe Rey, artist, Francois Charbonnet, architect, and Valerie Boillat, unionist; were also invited to present their perception of "doubt", "knowledge" and "commitment" through a written record.
In parallel, an archive is displayed produced by students from the High School of Art and Design in Geneva involving sixty historical examples of experimental and prototypical architecture developed within the laboratory ESPA HEAD workshop, "Pavilions and Heroism" directed by Christian Dupraz.
"Gunite Over? Plasticity of concrete", Christian Dupraz, lecture as part of the Salle Blanche exhibition at Sicli Pavilion, Geneva, 09 September 2012.
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«GUNITE OVER ?» Christian Dupraz
Gunite Over ? / a-editions.ch / © 2013 / 96 pages 130 X 190 mm / (french–english) / ISBN 978-2-9700920-0-1
Gunite Over ? covers the lecture of the swiss architect Christian Dupraz.
This contribution is part of a partnership between the Salle Blanche exhibition presented at the Bâtiment d’Art Contemporain (BAC) and the European Heritage Days devoted to stone and concrete.
Associated with the realisation of concave and convex surfaces, gunite is a mix of concrete and sand permitting the projection of the material and its solidification in complex forms.
The application of this technique is historically linked to the development of shells and to the demanding research of its engineers (Eduardo Torroja (1899-1961), Heinz Isler (1926-2009), Ulrich Müther (1934-2007)…) but equally to the formidable questioning of architects for an appreciatin of free form (Pascal Häusermann (1936-2011), Vittorio Giorgini (1926-2010), Jacques Couëlle (1902-1996)…).
This parallelism between a mastered approach of some and the random quest of others informs us of the great vitality of our history.
