Elizabeth de Portzamparc

Born in Rio de Janeiro,[2] Elizabeth de Portzamparc developed a very early passion for art. While she was still a child, her father, who was from Belo Horizonte and was passionate about architecture, regularly took her to Pampulha Art Museum and talked to her about the "genius Oscar Niemeyer," who he knew and admired. Motivated by Iberê Camargo, a friend of her parents, Elizabeth started to practice conceptual art in her youth. She studied in the schools Sacred Heart of Jesus, Santa Ursula, Brasileiro de Almeida, and then passed the "vestibular" exams and entered the PUC (Pontifical Catholic University) faculty in Rio, which she had to abandon very soon because of the urge to leave the country.

Later on, in France, simultaneously to her studies in anthropology, urban sociology (Paris V), and regional planning (IEDES-Paris I), she dedicated herself exclusively to urban themes: new towns, the work of the Institut d'aménagement et d'urbanisme de la région d'Île-de-France (IAURIF; now the IAU), and particularly to the urbanism workshop of Antony commune. There, in 1977-78, she set pioneer studies on the concepts of "neighborhoods/sub-neighborhoods", bringing the notions of "local life" and territorial links to the center of the founding principles of territorial planning policies.[3]

In 1980, she obtained the ability to teach in French architecture schools and taught in the Ecole Nationale Supérieure d’Architecture of Paris-Val de Seine (UP9) between 1984 and 1988.

She worked on a research named Extension de la Démocratie Locale, published in 1982, for the French Ministry of Environment and Quality of Life. In 1984, she carried an operational research for the French Ministry of the Equipment, by creating the first inter-communal urbanism structure for the project of the South Paris "Coulée verte". This research was later developed and completed by the IAURIF.

De Portzamparc designed the "24 hours" desk, which was exhibited at the 1985 Decorator Artist's Fair and at the Cartier Foundation during the exhibition called MDF, des créateurs pour un matériau (MDF, creators for a material). It was a great success and was then acquired by the Fonds National d'Art Contemporain.

In 1986, she opened and managed the Mostra gallery in Paris. Surrounded by artists, designers and architects such as Jean Nouvel, Rem Koolhaas, Christian de Portzamparc, François Rouan, Pierre Buraglio, Arata Isozaki, Bernar Venet, and Peter Klasen, among others, she questioned the creative approach proper to architects, artists and contemporary furniture designers of that time. Consequently, through themed exhibitions, she developed a profusion of unique ideas showing very clearly the specificities of each creative field, which brought her to the headlines of many French and international magazines and put her gallery on the podium of the best Parisian galleries.

In 1987, she created her own architecture agency, which is since then characterized by many projects touching different levels of development.[4][5][6][7][8][9]

Elizabeth de Portzamparc won the 1989 contest for the creation of the Information Center of the French National Assembly,[10]. In 1992 she won the contest for the museography project of the Korean National Museum, to which she created a museographic urban path, based on a circuit of interior streets that extend the exterior public spaces, going through the exhibition rooms.

In 1995, she created the museography for the Museum of Brittany, in Rennes, for which she also designed a library, interior open squares and spaces for kids. Elizabeth de Portzamparc said that this work is a crystallisation of her style: she gets inspiration from the urban morphology to create interior "urban spaces" that host the different historical cycles. The scenographies of the first sequences are installed in spaces that remind buildings and public squares; the following ones are organized in spaces organized as a street, and those of the two great wars are presented in a tunnel, a more dramatic space that reminds the darkness of this period of our history. The ongoing contemporary time is installed in an open, interactive and scalable forum.

One of the rare women in architecture to win great international contests, Elizabeth won in 1997 the contest for the project of stations and urban furniture designed for the Bordeaux metropolitan tramway network. She created the stations as public squares in the city, very accessible and appropriable, based on the ideas of transparency, lightering and velocity, but most of all aiming the creation of a metropolitan identity. A unique collection of urban furniture, arranged to reveal the proper features of each one of the places crossed by the tramway, creates an unequivocal identity.

Working as an architect and urbanist, Elizabeth de Portzamparc plans her buildings as architectural symbols: they carry new values, they are strong urban landmarks that structure and inhabit perfectly the places where they are installed. Open to the city and to its inhabitants, her projects - such as the Musée de la Romanité de Nîmes, the Grand Documentary Equipment of the Condorcet Campus in Aubervilliers and the Le Bourget railway station of Le Bourget - have been thought as places "to live in", which are easily appropriable. Their porous and open architecture, crossed by the interior streets, makes them open to all.[11][12] Each building's atrium is a real interior public square, protected and luminous, a creator of collective life, support for everyone's quality of life.

Thanks to her double sociological and architectural approach, she combines the imperatives of the social, urban and ecological significance with an optimum realization of the form, a coherent action visible in all aspects of her work.[13] Her projects are characterized by their innovative proposals in terms of flexibility and good space management.

Her academic and artistic education, combined with her multicultural vision, bring multiple facets and a complex dimension to her works. By means of the application of her reflexions on the identity of cities and metropolis, her projects respect and reinforce the qualities of the context where they are put in.

By fostering the crossing spaces and a strong relationship with nature, they create a special atmosphere, express easily identifiable collective values and initiate a dialogue with the environmental urban landscape and the local culture. Her sober architecture, with light and pure lines, based on the lightering of the masses and on the economy of forms and materials, shows that building in an economic way do not mean banalization or loss of architectural quality.

Flexibility is an ongoing theme in her projects and one of the most important for Elizabeth de Portzamparc, for it allows fighting the obsolescence of buildings, to assure their durability. A project must be capable of evolving throughout time and to adapt to different purposes and programs. As shown by the projects of the GED and the Le Bourget railway stations, by following this principle, she creates "total-flex" buildings, for mixed-use, with open plans and with the possibility of future extension without changing the original concept.

Sustainable development is an ecosystem approach adopted by Elizabeth de Portzamparc at al levels of her work according to the different aspects and needs of each project, whether it concerns territory planning or buildings. She develops bioclimatic projects, energetically autonomous, which become active in this action in every dimension (environmental, economic and social). By recreating the local biodiversity in her projects, she embeds her buildings perfectly to the nature and to each context.

In the Atelier International du Grand Paris she pursuits her researches led since 30 years about the identity of the places, the local life and the territorial links, fundamental contributions to the reflexions on the construction of the metropolis. Still in this same context, she made various propositions for sustainable, flexible, mixed-use and prefab housing, with controlled cost and fast to build. These models on which Elizabeth de Portzamparc works since 2004 for fast housing of homeless and refugees is a suitable solution for housing the most fragile individuals, humanitarian issue of ever-growing importance. By placing Mankind and Nature in the center of her concerns, through her projects she tries to bring appropriate answers to our civilization's crisis.[14]

• 2016 - The Musée de la Romanité of Nîmes wins the "Future Heritage Award" in Dubrovnik, Croacia[20]
• 2014 - Medal from the French Senate for her work
• Since 2012 - Member of the Scientific Council of the Atelier International du Grand Paris
• 2005 - Mipim design award for the rehabilitation of the Journal Le Monde, Cannes
• 2002 - "Lighting Design Award" for the urban luminaire HESTIA, London
• 2002 - International Prize, category "hotels" for the Brasserie "Les Grandes Marches", Contract World Award, Hanover
• 1999 - International Prize for Interior Design and Architecture, Fondation Candido Mendes, bestowed by Sergio Bernardes, Rio de Janeiro

• 4th Biennial of Architecture and Urbanism of Caen, (Re)Construire la ville sur-mesure: lecture on the theme "Fabriquer un tissu urbain contemporain", October 8, 2016
• Symposium (Re)Créer le monde: lecture on the theme "Architecture et visions du monde: la renaissance de l'architecture et de notre civilisation?", May 20, 2016 at the Philharmonie de Paris
• Participation in the exhibition "Les passagers du Grand Paris Express", from March 11 to May 22, 2016, in Boulogne-Billancourt
• Participation in the exhibition Casa Cidade Mundo, from October 3 to November 14, 2015, in Rio de Janeiro
• Conference in the Rio Academy International Forum on the theme "Urbanisme et mobilité", July 21, 2015 in Rio de Janeiro
• Conference in the Centre Pierres Vives on the theme "Identité urbaine: le local et le global", February 6, 2014 in Montpellier
• Participation in the roundtable on the theme "Architecture & Cinéma" in the 2nd edition of the Festival Cinecoa, September 29, 2012, in Vila Nova de Foz Côa, Portugal
• Participation in the exhibition "MDF, des créateurs pour un matériau", from April 24 to May 22, 1988, at the Fondation Cartier for Contemporary Art, Paris

• Participation in the catalogue of the Biennial of Architecture and Urbanism of Caen, 2016
• Participation in the catalogue of the exhibition "Une brève histoire de l’avenir" in the Louvre Museum, from September 24, 2015, to January 4, 2016
• Participation in the book "Cher Corbu…", tribute to Le Corbusier at the time of the 50th anniversary of his death, January 2015
• Participation in the number 3 of the magazine Stream on the theme "Issues of the local in the age of global urbanisation", November 2014
• Participation to the special édition of the magazine L’Architecture Aujourd’hui in tribute tu Oscar Niemeyer – Paroles d’Architectes (page 23), 2013
• Book about the Museum of Brittany (museography), 2006
• Research for the Ministry of Environment and Quality of life: "Extension of the local democracy, new social actors and information strategies", 1982
• Implementation of the study "The neighborhoods of Antony: urban and socio-economic analysis and diagnose of the city", 1980
• Implementation of the "Reference plan of Antony" with Georges Douarre: proposition of urban plannings (traffic plans, urban equipments and housing), 1980
• Research for the Public Institution of the New City of Saint-Quentin en Yvelines: the neighborhood of Elancourt-Maurepas. From the urban planner's new city to the city of the inhabitants. With Marie-Odile Terrenoire, 1975

• Official website
• Musée de la Romanité à Nîmes