SCI-Arc to Host Exhibition and Book Release for Claude Parent: Visionary Architect

SCI-Arc is pleased to announce that it will be hosting an exhibition and the corresponding discussion to celebrate the release of the book Claude Parent: Visionary Architect (Rizzoli New York). Opening on October 25 and sharing the book’s title, the exhibition will be installed within SCI-Arc’s Kappe Library and will feature the work of French architect Claude Parent, including a full-scale ramp installation based on the architect’s own oblique apartment interior, a selection of never before seen original drawings and sketches, and photographs of iconic projects and publications on Parent’s work.

Architect and theoretician Claude Parent was the first in France to make a sharp break with modernism beginning in the 1950s. Through books, manifesto-drawings, and built projects, his work has enabled new conceptualizations and understandings of space. Parent’s manifesto, the Oblique Function theory, developed with Paul Virilio in 1963, dictated that buildings should use slopes, reject orthogonality, be wall-free where possible, and have a predominance of space over the surface.

Considered one of the most pivotal and radical architects of the twentieth century, Parent’s work directly influenced renowned architects such as Frank Gehry, Zaha Hadid, Daniel Libeskind, and Jean Nouvel. Some of Parent’s iconic built works include the Villa Bloc in Antibes (1962), Drusch House in Versailles (1965), Sainte-Bernadette church in Nevers (1966), Fondation Avicenne in Paris (1968), and the oblique superstores of Sens and Ris-Orangis (1971).

Claude Parent: Visionary Architect opens on October 25, 2019 at 7pm in the Kappe Library with a book presentation and conversation between special guests Jennifer Dunlop Fletcher, Neil M. Denari, Deborah Richmond, Michele Saee, and Hernán Díaz Alonso. The authors Chloé and Laszlo Parent will also be in attendance. The exhibition will run through December 1.

Designers and curators:
Laszlo Parent and Sara Benrahmoun
Drawings and photographs:
Claude Parent Archives
Oblique Ramps construction:

SCI-Arc
Exhibition & Book Launch
Kappe Library

October 25 - December 1
October 25, 7pm: Discussion followed by opening reception

Archives: contact@claudeparent.fr
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