Maisons privées d’architectes

«Tell me where you live and I will tell you who you are». In a profession as particular as that of architects, the saying is not necessarily valid. As we learn in this book that introduces us daily lives of Günther Domenig, Richard Rogers or Norman Foster, architects hesitate between two opposite strategies: to live in a house that reveals everything about them – or in one that says nothing… We know that to Frank Gehry the building of his home in California was the testing ground that would lead to the Guggenheim Bilbao. All the contrary of Oswald Mathias Ungers, who feels compelled to turn his home into an utopist manifesto, Massimiliano Fuksas is quite happy in his that reveals nothing. These homes, taken from former industrial silos, (Bofill), barns (Portoghesi), slanting over the sea (Shoei Yoh) or in an apartment building (Chemetov), they always have one quality: one is never indifferent to them. One regret in face of this book from 1999, is that its new publication with a very spirited text, is not updated and that it does not explain this choice (which can have its good reasons) of leaving things set in time…

•Maisons privées d’architectes, by Jean-Louis André and Eric Morin, Chêne, 2010, 192 p., 25 €.