When you return from a trip, you often take a fresh look at your surroundings, but what about when you bring bits of it with you? The Atelier Pierre Thibault is currently experiencing this through the exhibition Territoires et paysage, presenting his work from the last 20 years in Quebec, and which opens its doors this Saturday at the Galerie d’architecture de Paris.
Twelve black suitcases from Quebec joined the Galerie d’architecture de Paris, in the Marais, on a beautiful spring day in April. Delicately housed inside these, poplar wood models represent the essence of the work of the Atelier Pierre Thibault.
The entire team of the famous architect made the trip to mount the exhibition Territories and Landscapes, but also to have another perspective on the work accomplished over the past two decades. “It’s a way to take a look at our projects. Every time I did that, it kind of sparked a breadcrumb trail between them. We always have this concern to fit in a lasting way in an environment, “says Pierre Thibault.
The founder of the Atelier Pierre Thibault transposed this work in the gallery that the visitor is invited to discover as if he were in Quebec. Tables, like islets in the middle of a lake, present models, plans, watercolors and sketchbooks of explored and respected territories. Huge photos of Quebec landscapes, taken over the four seasons, transport Parisians to the other side of the ocean to take the measure of the links between these places and the architecture that is there. rooted.
“The relationship we have with the outside is so important,” says Pierre Thibault, who for 35 years has designed each house to strengthen it. The projects selected for this exhibition testify to this, regardless of their size or natural setting. We thus find the residence of Lac-Brome, in the Eastern Townships, with its indoor Zen garden and its fireplace in a covered terrace, the signature of the workshop, to enjoy the outdoors at all times or almost, or the Lupin, an 80 m2 habitat in the Bas-Saint-Laurent, where life tends towards the river and the surrounding countryside.
This exhibition, born of a meeting with the director of the gallery during one of Pierre Thibault’s many stays in Paris (who had already exhibited at the Jardin des Tuileries in 1999), was initially to open its doors in April 2020. The pandemic , which delayed this event, also made his remarks all the more relevant for city dwellers. “The pandemic has changed a lot of things in France. It is as if we had rediscovered the specificities of the provincial territories; we had given them back their letters of nobility,” observes the architect, who also likes to point out one of the strengths of Quebec: that of having to deal with impressive climatic differences for a long time.
The paths to follow are there: preserve the plant and reintegrate it into our lives, but also favor a sober habitat that breathes by blurring the limits between the interior and the exterior. “You have to find the singularity of the territories to try to know what can be introduced there and put in relation, in the most harmonious way possible, the territory and the architecture, in the countryside as in the city”, explains Pierre Thibault , which is preparing to release a new book next September extolling the daily benefits of architecture designed with nature in mind.
