Claude Parent / Vivre à l'oblique

Since the creation of his agency in 1956, Claude Parent has never ceased to shake up accepted ideas. A true obstacle to thinking in circles, he has sought to redefine our living spaces by constructing disruptive buildings with sloping floors and walls. Breaking with the classical and modernist orthogonal rule, Claude Parent introduces the oblique as an architectural solution, promoting movement and instability in the architectural language. He is the architect of the oblique function, a theory he developed with Paul Virilio in 1964, advocating the fixation of human life on inclined planes.

Vivre à l'oblique remains the great idea of the architect Claude Parent, which he states as the most natural posture for man. The texts in this publication explain and illustrate the unlimited possibilities of this new way of taking possession of space that sets architecture in motion.

The first edition of this theoretical text by the architect Claude Parent is now out of print. This text, accompanied by illustrations by Claude Parent, is being reissued on the occasion of the centenary of his birth in February 2023. It is an opportunity to rediscover a founding speech and the major importance of Claude Parent's contribution to contemporary architecture, which recognises him as an extraordinary creator, always in search of imbalance, movement and fluidity.