FABIEN VIENNE
Born in 1925 in Paris, Fabien Vienne, architect, modeler and urban planner, trained at the School of Applied Arts, followed his whole life an atypical modern course that led him from furniture design to urban planning. among other things, the development of constructive systems, the creation of unique architectural "objects", the design of scenographies and the invention of construction games.
This versatility is, at bottom, the mark of an indefatigable work of investigation, a curiosity always renewed and the requirement of a creator for whom modernity is also an art of living and questioning society. Fabien Vienne is 20 years old at the Liberation. The shock caused by the war and his questioning succeeds for him the discovery of the Modern Movement and some of his "heralds" French. Indeed, recruited by Jean Bossu, former collaborator of the purist years of Le Corbusier, he participated in his side to the vast construction site of the Reconstruction and finds himself propelled into the heart of French modernity: he will then work for Lods, Hermant, Nelson, and will meet Le Corbusier, Prouvé, Perriand, Perret, Hanning, Miquel, & c. This meeting decides his commitment in architecture. And, like his predecessors, he will be trained on the job, in the concrete experience of the Reconstruction and agency work sites.
In the early fifties, he moved to Reunion (Indian Ocean) to follow the sites of Jean Bossu and set up a local agency. The task is immense, the means still limited, the work abundant. This overseas adventure marked him deeply and, on his return to the metropolis, he founded his own structure, the SOAA, an architectural cooperative still in operation, with a status in keeping with its vision of existence and human relationships.
The singularity of Fabien Vinee's career, is accompanied by a production quite unique in France at that time. Indeed, not having graduated (until 1977), it escapes almost entirely to the mass public production of the years of the Growth. His orders come mainly from private owners, often entrepreneurs, with whom he will build lasting relationships that will often exceed the mere professional relationships. Therefore, far from the norms and habits that are set up in the mass production of housing, he explores for his sponsors, or himself, leads that his colleagues neglect or ignore, showing a capacity of adaptation and remarkable invention. Thus, for example, it develops a flexible, varied and economical construction system to build, by hundreds and of all sizes, wooden houses in Reunion (EXN system, still used today). However, this system, a real industrial success, is itself the heir of several previous researches and achievements, like the Trigone system (1968), used for the realization of holiday villages (Val d'Yerres, 1971). Likewise, he conceives a whole village of modern houses in strips, installed in the slope, in a site where the time does not would have imagined that bars or towers (Our Lady of the Guard, La Ciotat, 1968). For a furniture manufacturer, he designs a complete range of furniture designed on a modular basis to design them as complementary parts, cousins and articulated a coherent whole, both formally and in terms of production and production. use (COX, 1969-1974).
This ability to adapt is expressed both by the variety of scales covered during his career (from the object to the urban plan) and by the range of programs he has encountered (houses, schools, offices, factories, hotel, health center, universities, collective housing, etc.). It is expressed mainly by the diversity and the relevance of the architectural answers.
Finally, beyond what brings Fabien Vienne closer to other modern architects of his generation, the singularity of his production is based essentially on a love of geometry and on the principle of economy. Indeed, geometry is for him much more than a simple tool of composition but the expression, quasi philosophical, of a way to understand the world and to express its laws. As for the principle of economy, it must not be understood in a narrow way as a merely accounting vision of the art of building. On the contrary, it expresses in him a search for what is essential in a realization, the attempt to reveal what is the essence of a production.
This versatility is, at bottom, the mark of an indefatigable work of investigation, a curiosity always renewed and the requirement of a creator for whom modernity is also an art of living and questioning society. Fabien Vienne is 20 years old at the Liberation. The shock caused by the war and his questioning succeeds for him the discovery of the Modern Movement and some of his "heralds" French. Indeed, recruited by Jean Bossu, former collaborator of the purist years of Le Corbusier, he participated in his side to the vast construction site of the Reconstruction and finds himself propelled into the heart of French modernity: he will then work for Lods, Hermant, Nelson, and will meet Le Corbusier, Prouvé, Perriand, Perret, Hanning, Miquel, & c. This meeting decides his commitment in architecture. And, like his predecessors, he will be trained on the job, in the concrete experience of the Reconstruction and agency work sites.
In the early fifties, he moved to Reunion (Indian Ocean) to follow the sites of Jean Bossu and set up a local agency. The task is immense, the means still limited, the work abundant. This overseas adventure marked him deeply and, on his return to the metropolis, he founded his own structure, the SOAA, an architectural cooperative still in operation, with a status in keeping with its vision of existence and human relationships.
The singularity of Fabien Vinee's career, is accompanied by a production quite unique in France at that time. Indeed, not having graduated (until 1977), it escapes almost entirely to the mass public production of the years of the Growth. His orders come mainly from private owners, often entrepreneurs, with whom he will build lasting relationships that will often exceed the mere professional relationships. Therefore, far from the norms and habits that are set up in the mass production of housing, he explores for his sponsors, or himself, leads that his colleagues neglect or ignore, showing a capacity of adaptation and remarkable invention. Thus, for example, it develops a flexible, varied and economical construction system to build, by hundreds and of all sizes, wooden houses in Reunion (EXN system, still used today). However, this system, a real industrial success, is itself the heir of several previous researches and achievements, like the Trigone system (1968), used for the realization of holiday villages (Val d'Yerres, 1971). Likewise, he conceives a whole village of modern houses in strips, installed in the slope, in a site where the time does not would have imagined that bars or towers (Our Lady of the Guard, La Ciotat, 1968). For a furniture manufacturer, he designs a complete range of furniture designed on a modular basis to design them as complementary parts, cousins and articulated a coherent whole, both formally and in terms of production and production. use (COX, 1969-1974).
This ability to adapt is expressed both by the variety of scales covered during his career (from the object to the urban plan) and by the range of programs he has encountered (houses, schools, offices, factories, hotel, health center, universities, collective housing, etc.). It is expressed mainly by the diversity and the relevance of the architectural answers.
Finally, beyond what brings Fabien Vienne closer to other modern architects of his generation, the singularity of his production is based essentially on a love of geometry and on the principle of economy. Indeed, geometry is for him much more than a simple tool of composition but the expression, quasi philosophical, of a way to understand the world and to express its laws. As for the principle of economy, it must not be understood in a narrow way as a merely accounting vision of the art of building. On the contrary, it expresses in him a search for what is essential in a realization, the attempt to reveal what is the essence of a production.