Bio
ABOUT CLEMENT BLANCHET ARCHITECTURE
Clément Blanchet Architecture (CBA) is an innovative architecture and urban design practice that brings together multidisciplinary and multicultural actors on themes around the city, architecture and all media related to it. The firm approaches the design of architecture, infrastructure and the city as necessarily interrelated, and in negotiation with planning, development and public space. This complexity is not a constraint but a project tool to reveal solutions that possess potential simplicity, clarity and unity.
CBA was founded with a mandate to rethink architecture and urbanism as a way to better solve, read and represent the city; to find new meaning for the architecture of the city as a durable and enduring urban project. In many competition-winning designs, originality is found in the beauty of the ordinary.
Graphic interpretation of the CBA facade in Paris.
Stable and experienced, CBA makes its diversity a strength. To generate highly specific responses, CBA activates its extensive knowledge network, working with and leading complex multidisciplinary teams. In this way, the practice becomes the mediator, the coordinator, guaranteeing the unity of the project and integrity of the concept. The practice is structured as a laboratory, informing and generating architecture and urbanism in all its forms.
The synergy between theory and practice is the base of its methodological approach. The practice engages the consciousness of reality, of the real world, but also the analysis of phenomena – environmental, developmental, economic - that affect and feed architecture. This methodology not only deals with inventions but also with manipulations, making program legible, and ensuring resilience and durability over time.
The structure operates at multiple scales; from designing interiors to public cultural facilities, while considering specific approaches in the areas of education, housing, infrastructure, landscape and urbanism. The firm has also developed tools for dialogue with different urban and project actors, aimed to place the user at the heart of the creative process. Through this way of working CBA delivers robust projects that challenge the status quo for its clients, cities , the urban environments and the populations within them.
In the studio in Paris.
ABOUT CLEMENT BLANCHET
Clément Blanchet is Principle of Clément Blanchet Architecture (CBA) and a former Associate of the Office for Metropolitan Architecture (OMA), where he joined in 2004.
In 2011, Clement Blanchet was appointed Director of OMA France, with whom CBA continues to collaborate with on ongoing projects led by Blanchet. While at OMA and from a selection of projects, Blanchet was in charge of the Serpentine Gallery in collaboration with Cecil Balmond, the Seguin Island redevelopment in Paris, the new theatre in Casablanca, the Earth Science museum in Rabat, the European quarter in Rue de La Loi, the Monaco’s extension in the sea with C. De Portzamparc and F. O Gehry. Clément Blanchet created the Dauphin and Grillé’s Restaurants in Paris.
During his 10 years collaborating with Rem Koolhaas, Blanchet has contributed to the development of OMA in France and led several winning project for the firm, including the design and construction of Caen Library in France, the design and development of winning entries like the Convention and exhibition Centre in Toulouse, the Engineering school of Centrale, master plans in Saclay and in Bordeaux, and lately the bridge JJ Bosc over the Garonne in Bordeaux.
Clément Blanchet.
CBA has been shortlisted to participate in several International competitions as for instance: the ferry boat terminal in Toronto, the extension of Nice train station, the new Polytechnique Engineering School, the extension of Bordeaux Convention Center, or the redesign of the Eiffel Paris’s Ferry Terminal. The firm is currently leading ongoing Housings projects, soon under construction as well as a highrise in Nice. On another scale, CBA is commissioned to question the shopping mall of the XXI century through a 100hA master plan in Bouliac (south of France).
He graduated with high honours from the Architectural school of Versailles and has been an invited critic in France, England, Holland, Switzerland, Denmark & Sweden. He currently teaches at Paris Val de Seine Architectural School and ESA. Clément Blanchet divides his time between this firm in Paris and the United States where he also teaches at the University of Michigan and Rice University.
A model designed by CBA.