Maurice Sauzet: Poetics of Architecture

Maurice Sauzet is an architect of full and empty, light and shadow, horizontality and verticality.

A graduate of the Special School of Architecture, he followed his wife, a stylist, to Japan, and became a collaborator at the architectural agency of Junzo Sakakura – a student of Le Corbusier who was close to Charlotte Perriand, who herself had left for Japan at his invitation in 1940 – in Osaka, from 1959 to 1961. This Japanese experience was decisive in his career. In particular, it allowed him to discover the strength of Zen Buddhist architecture, its ability to stir the senses and enable us to live in harmony with nature. Founder of an architectural agency in Toulon with Jean Parente and Claude Vilfour in the early 1960s, he collaborated with Jean Prouvé in 1963 to create the Villa Seynave, in Beauvallon. From 1966, he created and directed the Varois town planning workshop. He also taught: from 1968 to 1993 at the Marseille educational unit and at the Toulon school of fine arts from 1974 to 1982.

His achievements, in the wake of his theoretical vision, are based as much on an oriental approach to space and light as on the vernacular dimension of the places in which his projects – especially individual houses, but also a college and a factory – take place, mainly in the South-East of France, but also in Brittany. A proponent of natural architecture, akin to Japanese Zen temples, Maurice Sauzet designs airy buildings unfolding in space, from the interior to the exterior, in complete osmosis with their environment. Places and environments are reconsidered based on generic principles which link building to living and to nature. Innovative as well as emotional, his vision and his achievements are at the origin of a true “poetics of architecture”.

• 23 x 28.5 cm
• 352 pages
• Around 450 illustrations
• ISBN: 978-2-9155-42790

Text in French only

Chris Younès, docteur en philosophie, psychosociologue, est professeur à l’École nationale supérieure d’architecture de Paris la Villette et à l’École spéciale d’architecture. Directrice du laboratoire Gerphau au CNRS, elle est également membre du conseil scientifique d’Europan. Ses travaux et recherches développent une interface architecture et philosophie sur la question des lieux de l’habiter, au point de rencontre entre éthique et esthétique ainsi qu’entre nature et artefact.

Parmi ses ouvrages, elle assure la direction de Habiter, le propre de l’humain (avec Thierry Paquot et Michel Lussault), La Découverte, 2007 ; Philosophie de l’environnement et milieux urbains (avec Thierry Paquot), La Découverte, 2010 ; Espace et Lieu dans la pensée occidentale. De Platon à Nietzsche (avec Thierry Paquot), La Découverte, 2012 ; Perception, architecture, urbain (avec Xavier Bonnaud), Infolio, 2014; Intensive Beyrouth, Éditions Norma, 2014.