Rudy Ricciotti: "I'm the tocapelotas of architecture"

Pilar sculptural part of the colonnade of the Cocteau Museum. Menton, Riviera francesa. 2011

Ricciotti is a professional based in the south of France that works between architectures characterized by high expressive power and develops a speech epatante. Lately is gradually being recognized in the Gallic country from which 2006 is the concediera el Grand Prize for Architecture.

El arquitecto Rudi Ricciotti. Photo: Jaime Hawkesworth, New York Times

Since its inception, This has searched the controversy as a strategy to attract attention and achieve massive media recognition. In this style of enfant terrible so characteristic of some French, described himself as a "architecture Salafist " an recent interview with the newspaper Le Figaro. There he declared supporter of an art of exaggeration as a valuable resource to recover innovation and freedom of architecture versus "regulatory pornography ". Was referring to the current standardization imposed by the regulations of all kinds that plague the designer. His latest outburst has resulted in the manifesto entitled "Architecture is a combat sport".

Rudi Ricciotti is a technician who has a long experience in the management of concrete structures. Especially since in 1994 build the Stadium, cubic monolith topped externally with the massive use of this material, which was originally intended to house a performance space with great sound insulation achieved by its dense gray walls. This box autistic would the appearance of a building without references in the desolate landscape of Vitrolles, a New Town suburban straddles the Autoroute du Soleil the su step Aix en Provence. The Stadium is now a massive construction of radical gesture that has been abandoned to the colonization of the graffiti for many years.

Space Stadium. Vitrolles, Vux in Provence. 1994 Pool deck at Villa Navarre in Le Muy. 2002

At Villa Navarre in Le Muy, Ricciotti maintains the tension in the search ends. The fine scanning is an aesthetic cover of concrete structural limits. A cantilevered free 40 m and almost 8 meters, projecting into the landscape to frame a conventional pool sheet against horizon.

Over the years it has evolved into an architecture that seeks greater expressiveness and ornament. So it seems, of what it is to make a difference and attraction of strangeness. It is a language that seeks to communicate with the user through contrast with places, about exploring the peculiarities of the structures based on reinforced concrete and simplistic plasticity that makes possible the versatility of this material. The tension of the architecture focuses on defining and fur woven with intricate sculptural forms random and capricious.

His compositional strategy is of extreme banality. Is based on the definition of glass boxes that set the limit of the interior spaces which are coated with precast wrappers. Design the outer skins as formal coating to fit various irregular shapes that setting just outside flat simple repeated shapes tissues and serialized. As in the so-called Black Pavilion, which houses the National Choreographic Centre of France, built in Aix en Provence in 2006.

Cocteau Museum Night Vision. Menton, Riviera francesa. 2011

Environment bright indoor exhibition space. Photography Roland Halbe

In Chin, at the edge of the Mediterranean, has finished building in 2011 the Museum Cocteau, a space dedicated to the poet and intellectual will shoot the first film version of the traditional tale Beauty and the Bsummer. The museum space is a kind of triangular white concrete shell which fractured his edges to establish a kind of sculptural porch. A columnar filigree comb that runs along the outside of the building facade. Inside, is designed extremely conventional spatial organization in which the trapezoidal space available is simply divided into two parts by the services and spaces for stairways and lifts. Their random character introduces a powerful sculptural presence in the waterfront of this small enclave on the French Riviera. It is a work in the wake of other iconic facilities such as the Guggenheim Bilbao; and Cocteau Museum houses the collection of Severin Wunderman setting the contrast of a menacing presence in the picturesque village of charming hotels and manicured gardens.

In 2012, and the Visconti courtyard of the Louvre Museum, designed by Mario Bellini spectacular undulating roof containing new trade exhibition for the collections of Islamic art cultural facility that gigantic Paris. Is gold foil covering a space added 7.000 m2 and seems to float like a flying carpet in a visual metaphor and playful invasive, somehow, take away limelight from the preceding baroque and stately architecture of Claude Perrault.

Space exhibition of Islamic art collections of the Louvre Museum in the Visconti courtyard.

Finally this year, recently opened the Museum of Civilizations from Europe and the Mediterranean port city of Marseille. Another glass container covered externally by a massive concrete lace is located in a privileged, reclaimed platform against Fort Saint Jean that protects the harbor primitive. The exhibition is questionable and is affected by the contrast of light that generates the tissue that surround outer planes, really preventing proper enjoyment of what is shown in those interiors.

MUCEM. Museum of Civilizations from Europe and the Mediterranean. Marseilles, 2013

Another star is born international architecture. Today, in our discipline, seems that we are still installed maverick geniuses selling through mass media. What is unbearable of all these characters is their extreme egotism, torrential speech full of headlines that create epatantes show and present their vagaries as the last word in the art of building. In a stepwise manner, culture is thus being reduced to entertainment with the willing support of all.

France celebrates the architecture of this new player in the City of Architecture and Heritage open this summer maintaining a sample of la arquitectura de Rudi Ricciottiat its headquarters in Paris Trocadero. Remain all summer until the beginning of September.

Given the sample Rudi Ricciotti, architect currently being developed in the City of Architecture and Heritage Paris

More information:
Jean Cocteau Museum. Rudy Ricciotti. ArchDaily 12/04/2012
Ricciotti Architecte. City of Architecture. Paris. Until 8 September 2013
Rudy Ricciotti. Official Site of the Architect

The architect Rudy Ricciotti in a discussion program on French TV