Jury-GRANDS PRIX DU DESIGN / Published on May 10, 2021
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Ronan Fournier le Ray
Architect, Co-founder & Partner
MFR Architectes
Paris, France
PROUST QUESTIONNAIRE – PEOPLE OF DESIGN VERSION!
What prescient youthful memory relates to your present career?
As a teenager, a glass extension on an old stone building. A fascinating duality between the old and the contemporary. Between the secrecy and intimacy of the stones and the bold transparency.
What are three basic rules you learned from your mentors?
1. Renew
2. Again
3. Again
What project launched your career?
A housing project with a completely green roof and shared terrace in Gennevillliers.
« Toi, toi, mon toit », MFR Architectes for Vinci Immobilier at Gennevilliers, France, 2016.
The building reacts to its context. Facing the park, it extends its vegetal dimension in its heart of the island and on the roofs. Each roof is inhabited or shared. The facade comes in a gradient from gray to white: From the dark brick base, the telluric element of the project, to the evanescent white roofs.
Any music playing while you work?
Piano, jazz generally, or just the surrounding noise.
Do you work in PJs or three-piece suits?
Just between the 2
What is your current design state of mind?
Create new ways of living and humanise the built environment.
Consider ethics, aesthetics, as well as the lessons of experience.
What living designer/architect do you most admire?
Iberian architecture has shaped my culture.
Miralles, Souto de Moura, Siza, RCR, Mangado, as many writings as geniuses
What past designer/architect inspires you the most?
The whole group of the Modern movement.
How would you like your designs to go down in history?
Let them be recyclable!
What peer quality do you most value?
Simplicity…
Which project is the epitome of your work?
For my zenith, we will see at the end of my career !
Recently, we were lucky enough to win an emblematic project. A rare order: a wood-frame village currently under construction in Noisy-Le-Grand.
« Prendre Racine », MFR Architectes with Oyapock Architectes for the Giboire Group at Noisy-le-Grand, France, 2020.
A village, all in wood, of 120 accommodations with workshops, shared terraces and a restaurant. Perched on a hill, this village becomes an island when the water rises. Surrounded by a park and along the Marne, the project offers passive housing, with atypical spaces.
What always inspires you?
Nature is the most beautiful and inspiring architecture! A tree is for me a cathedral, a mathematics, a symbiosis.
What design or architecture project do you wish you would have thought of yourself?
Centre George Pompidou, Paris… anti aesthetic, purely functional, a symbolic and rebellious project.
Centre Pompidou, Paris, FRANCE
