Guy Rottier, un architecte-artiste parmi les artistes

Abstract

The French-Dutch architect Guy Rottier (1922-2013) placed the collaboration between architects and artists at the centre of his work. He was a disciple of Le Corbusier, graduating from the Paris Ecole des Beaux-Arts in 1952. He continually blurred the boundaries between art and architecture. As the only architect in the l’École de Nice group, as a member of the Groupe international d’architecture prospective (GIAP) and as a founder of the ‘Conspiratifs’ group, his researches reflect the rewarding collaborations that can emerge between architects and artists. The architect’s personal practice has an intrinsically interdisciplinary dimension going beyond its inscription in collaborative dynamics. In 1964, Guy Rottier joined the Ecole de Nice artists’ group. This encounter marked a significant break in his career moving from architecture to fine arts. The ambition of this article is to revisit this experience to understand how Guy Rottier’s approach suddenly changed and to raise further questions about the forms of collaboration between architects and artists. Through the study of a selection of projects, some of them theoretical, others actually carried out, the article looks at some of the stages of Rottier’s progress towards ‘arTchitecture’, a concept he formulated in 1987. We will try to understand how far architecture became synonymous with a total work of art. To conclude, through his experience within the GIAP and Conspiratifs, we will try to understand how collective dynamics were a driving force in Rottier’s individual creation

Keywords

• architecture
• architect
• artist
• Le Corbusier
• art
• collaboration