Frédéric Borel is renowned for his iconic housing projects that embody a new architectural hedonism on Boulevard de Belleville, Rue Oberkampf, and Rue Pelleport. Drawing from the Paris experienced and described by surrealist poets as a profusion of secret spaces and a collage of heterogeneous elements, capable of generating improbable events and unexpected encounters, these constructions testify to a unique approach to the urban question. These fragmented or unitary forms, always in rupture, strive to create new communal spaces or attractive hubs around which social life can condense.
His expressionist architectures branch out to offer truly sensitive spaces, animated by free and audacious forms. In Béthune, Rouen, Grand-Quevilly, or Paris with the École d’Architecture de Paris Val de Seine, housing or public facilities projects stand out as tutelary figures that radiate in the urban landscape.
Answering these bursts of colorful volumes are the objects, more compact, more internalized, public facilities that assert themselves in front of nature or the city as calm and serene masses. The Hotel des Impôts de Brive-la-Gaillarde, the University of Agen, the Moskowa school, the palace of justice in Narbonne stand as monoliths in suspension. The fire stations of Besançon, Dijon, Nogent sur Marne…all compose a gentle continuity with the landscape.
This principle of active architecture remains at work in all projects, with spaces offered to all, where specific atmospheres intersect and overlap under the benevolent masses of blocks in levitation, to create a sumptuous city dedicated to walking and wandering, luxury and sensuality.
This dreamlike and visionary architecture opens new windows to the world, and proposes true fictions that fuel and enrich.
www.ftn-books.com has one title on Borel now available.
