Didier Faustino live with Confluence - online lecture

My dear,
our mutual friend Didier Faustino has accepted the invitation to hold an online lecture today evening via the Zoom communication platform! This is the first in a series of four lectures you will be gradually invited to between now and the end of May.
It all arose from an initiative by students of the Confluence school, who invited Didier Faustino to present his current work and also to address topics that accompany the current situation.
Please kindly inform everyone else about this event and join us on Thursday, April 30, 2020, at 5:00 PM Central European Time via Zoom.
Warm regards to all,
Odile Decq

Today's lecture by Didier Faustino was included in the program of the 12th International Festival of Architecture, Design, and Art Archikultura 2020 thanks to the kind permission of Odile Decq, with whom the Cabinet of Architecture, z. s. has closely collaborated since 2017.

Didier Fiúza Faustino (*1968) is a highly active French artist and architect, alternating his life and work between Paris and Lisbon, and unusually processes the theme of the intimate relationship between body and space. His approach is versatile, utilizing both visual art and the transformation of various spaces so that our sensory perceptions have the opportunity to awaken and sharpen. His projects and realizations are characterized by the merging of fictional dimensions free from established clichés, offering unique experiences for both individuals and groups. Among his significant works and projects is, among others, one named Body in Transit, which was first presented at the Architectural Biennale in Venice in 2000 and then became part of the collection of the Centre Pompidou in Paris, as well as Double Happiness, which was showcased at the Hong Kong / Shenzhen Biennale in 2009. In 2010, Didier Faustino received the Dejean Prize from the Academy d'Architecture for lifetime achievement. He is currently working on several prestigious architectural projects, such as the library and cultural center in Mexico, an experimental house in Spain under the Solo Houses initiative, and a winery building in Portugal. Along with Pascal Mazoyer, he founded Mésarchitecture, his architectural studio, in 2002. Since September 2015, he has been the editor-in-chief of the French magazine CREE, which focuses on issues related to architecture and design.
He also dedicates part of his time to education, especially leading thesis preparation at the Architectural Association School of Architecture (AA School) in London since 2011. Didier Faustino is represented by the Michel Rein gallery in Paris, Galeria Filomena.
Soares in Lisbon, and Parque Galeria in Mexico City. He has an extensive portfolio of remarkable exhibitions and equally interesting publications.

Odile Decq (*1955) is an internationally renowned and often awarded architect, urban planner, and academic educator. She advocates for an uncompromising stance in seeking solutions, and even her early work was recognized with the Golden Lion at the Venice Architecture Biennale in 1996. The originality of her work encompasses not only a remarkable creative handwriting, explorative attitudes, and tireless searching but can primarily be described as the materialization of universal space, incorporating urban planning, architecture, design, and art. Her multidisciplinary approach has been recognized, among other awards, with the "Jane Drew Prize" in 2016, and in 2017 she received the international Architizer Lifetime Achievement Award.
Since 1992, Odile Decq has also served as a professor at the École Spéciale d'Architecture in Paris, where she was appointed head of the architecture department in 2007. She left in 2012 to subsequently build and establish her own school, the Institut Confluence for Innovation and Creative Strategies in Architecture (https://www.confluence.eu/) in Lyon, which she moved last year to the center of Paris for better accessibility.
The school advocates a simple but meaningfully substantive creed that "Architecture must not be limited to professional or specialized education", with Odile Decq, as the dean of this educational institution, adding: On the contrary, architecture is a discipline that must be open to the world. It is a vision and the ability to act. Today we must return to the healthy sources of humanism. CONFLUENCE thus integrates not only new social visions but also visions about society itself, as well as new methods and tools related to communication, and with such an approach and creation that will enable students to act in the world of tomorrow.
The Cabinet of Architecture began collaborating with Odile Decq in 2017, resulting in the exhibition installation by Odile Decq titled Horizons, which was presented for the first time in April 2018 to the broader public at the House of Art in Ostrava as part of the 10th International Festival of Architecture, Design, and Art ARCHIKULTURA 2018. During the reprise of the exhibition at the Gallery of the National Technical Library in Prague, another of her presentations was simultaneously available at the 16th Biennale of Architecture in Venice.
At the end of the ongoing biennale, the European Cultural Centre (ECC) awarded the prestigious European Cultural Centre Award 2018 to Odile Decq, one of the nominated creators, alongside figures like Peter Eisenman (USA), Odile Decq (FRA), Daniel Libeskind (POL/USA), Curt Fentress (USA), Moshe Safdie (CAN), Kengo Kuma (JPN), Nikken Sekkei (JPN).
Currently, she chairs the jury for the highly recognized RIBA International Prize, where together with Es Devlin, Jeanne Gang, Rossana Hu, and Gustavo Utrabo, she is expected to determine the winner in this biennial exhibition regularly organized by the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) by the end of November this year.

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