Dominique Perrault

By the time he was 40, architect Dominique Perrault had already designed France's important new national library, the last of the 'great projects' undertaken by president Francois Mitterrand. Since then he counts the velodrome and Olympic swimming pool in Berlin, the Aplix factory near Nantes and the Marinsky II in Saint Petersburg among his many projects. Paradoxically, although a prolific international designer and builder, he advocates for the 'disappearance of architecture'! Committed to 'concepts' and architecture as manifesto, Perrault excels in games of masks. For him, appearance, disappearance, derealization, dematerialization, crossings and lightening speed make up architecture's very substance. His architecture is one assembled from time, space, tension and energy, which this book attempts to decipher and unveil. Book jacket.