Studio Odile Decq

An impressive list of awards and honours have been bestowed on Odile Decq, including the Golden Lion in the 1996 International Architecture Exhibition. Practicing architect, urban planner, academic and teacher, she is the founder of her own School of Architecture in Lyon, France, called the Confluence Institute for Innovative and Creative Strategies in Architecture. For her, architecture is more powerful than design. It is a unique culture of its own.
To place new uses in existing buildings is a normal part of the work of an architect. To insert a contemporary use into a highly-sensitive, protected structure – the 19th-century, Second Empire and Beaux-Arts opera house in Paris by Charles Garnier – takes creative skill, bravery, and material knowhow. Allowed only to touch the floor, this “breaker of rules” creates a sinuous glass wall, making “no” glass, heightening illusion. The historic cupola was required to be seen, not hidden. Her crafted steel structure, cantilevers, moulded plaster are courageous insertions. The sinuous bench re-interprets contemporary luxury, using colour to add to the drama.
In her Phantom’s Phantom, she shares her passion for playing with ambiguity, where mirrors make you reassess dimension and space itself.
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