Benjamin Leclercq brings lost architecture back to life
The great history of architecture is fascinated by titanic projects with happy outcomes and memorable anecdotes. But what about the stories that tell of a building whose development was halted in mid-air? Buildings destroyed? In short, architecture that will never be again? These are the stories that journalist Benjamin Leclercq has set out to tell in Le fantôme de l'architecte, published by Editions Parenthèses.
A Le Corbusier hospital in Venice. A luxury desert resort designed by Frank Lloyd Wright. A children's park in New York designed by Isamu Noguchi. What do these three projects have in common? They never saw the light of day. It's this architecture of absence that drives Benjamin Leclercq's book, which looks back at ten heartfelt projects by renowned architects that never saw the light of day or, at best, were destroyed. Born in the pages of the daily Libération, on the occasion of a summer series, this collection of architectural ghosts now takes the form of a book. "I wanted to find this little submerged continent of unbuilt architecture, with projects that were close to my heart and in which architects put a little more of themselves than usual. "
Absence and disappearance
While in his articles the journalist only refers to absent buildings, in his publication he wishes to "add the notion of disappearance". "How does it feel when you're an architect to see, in your lifetime, a building in which you've invested time and ideas disappear? His collection includes Lina Bo Bardi's Casa do Chame-Chame, and Minoru Yamasaki's Pruitt-Igoe. It's also an opportunity for the author to highlight singular trajectories. "Yamasaki was a somewhat cursed architect, who was rather snubbed by the profession, because he was quite gentle and sensitive. He put a lot of care into ornament, at a time in modernism when people were looking for purity, simplicity and rationality. His path was a little counter-current, but he persisted. A cursed architect, because he was behind the collapse of the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001. "But the one who touched me the most was undoubtedly Noguchi. He wasn't really an architect, more of an artist, although he wanted to be a landscape architect. I was really touched by his determination. He spent forty years trying to sell his playgrounds to New York City Hall. Despite his stubbornness, he was unlucky; he arrived a little too early, he was a little too innovative."
Daily batch
Benjamin Leclercq also sought to vary the types of failure he encountered. " In the context of a competition, not being selected even though the project is great is the daily lot of every architect. I also wanted to show how other obstacles can derail projects, and how architecture collides with economic, political and cultural history. In Charlotte Perriand's case, it's a world war, for Frank Lloyd Wright the stock market crash, for Le Corbusier his own death, and for Francis Kéré it's a civil war." As for the case of Zaha Hadid and the Cardiff Bay Opera House, " It's more mysterious, more nebulous, but the main hypothesis is racism, and the misogyny of the local ecosystem, which wasn't happy to see this Arab woman come and build in the middle of the city."
Anger and suffering
Ten trajectories written through in-depth study of press clippings and archives, but also through encounters, such as that with "members of Zaha Hadid's team who were working with her on the project at the time", as well as with the Indian Raj Rewal, the mastermind behind New Delhi's Hall of Nations, destroyed in 2017. The author describes an interview "where you could really feel his pain", during which he finds the terrible and implacable answer to his question: " We architects never think about the disappearance of our works. So, when it does happen, the result is anger and suffering. "
LE FANTÔME DE L'ARCHITECTE BY BENJAMIN LECLERCQ
ÉDITIONS PARENTHÈSES, NOVEMBER 2024
