Christian de Portzamparc

Christian de Portzamparc is a French architect and urbanist. He graduated from the cole Nationale des Beaux Arts in Paris in 1970 and has since been noted for his bold designs and artistic touch his projects reflect a sensibility to their environment and to urbanism that is a founding principle of his work. He won the Pritzker Prize in 1994.

De Portzamparc was born in Casablanca, Morocco in 1944, when that country was a French protectorate in a family of Breton noble descent. He began studying architecture in 1962 at the cole nationale suprieure des BeauxArts in Paris where he was influenced by professors Eugne Beaudouin, who encouraged his taste for formal expressionism, and George Candilis, who emphasized systematic work on grids and networks. In 1966 he traveled to New York where he spent a few months during a ninemonth academic hiatus that was rooted in his hesitations about continuing in architectureArchitecture seemed to me to be too bureaucratic, and not free enough compared to art and the modernistic ideals which I worshiped before, seemed to me unable to reach the richness of real life. I also began to criticize my first influences like Le Corbusier. Nevertheless, he returned to his studies in the 1967 academic year and would graduate from the BeauxArts in 1969. He created his agency in 1980, supported by Marielis

Source: Wikipedia