Claude Parent. Errer dans l'illusion

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 introduced the oblique as an architectural solution, promoting movement and instability in architectural language. His willingly provocative writings attest to this. Parent was not afraid of polemics and harshly denounced the prevailing conformism and the failure of urban policies. This is the very purpose of his essay "Errer dans l'illusion" (Wandering in Illusion), of which the following extract sets the tone:

"The computer trance seizes architecture.
The compass goes mad, pushing towards the irrational.
Doubt sets in.
Reason capitulates.
The ghetto falls apart.
Its new territories are those of ILLUSION.
In layers, in folds, in waves, in flows, meshes are reversed and reversed, knotted and unrolled in continuity."
Claude Parent

On the occasion of the centenary of Claude Parent's birth in February 2023, this essential text is republished to understand the world that the modern architect faces today.

Illustrated with drawings by the architect, this reprint is enhanced by an introduction by Mehrad Sarmadi and a preface by Chloé Parent.