Born in Casablanca in 1944, Christian de Portzamparc is an architect and urban planner, graduated from the Ecole des Beaux Arts in Paris in 1969. He founded his agency, Atelier Christian de Portzamparc in 1980.

Based in Paris, France, he built the world, surrounded by a loyal team of over 100 people, organized into several “studio” working with partners on a variety of ambitious projects of international dimension. Amuch as a builder, Christian de Portzamparc, an architect, urbanist and painter, is involved in the search for forms and their meanings.

WORKSHOP
L’Atelier Christian de Portzamparc focuses on all levels of the building and on a variety of programs. Each project is a new challenge for research and experimentation, design drawings for construction of technical solutions. The workshop can also be defined as an “urban laboratory”; based on a profound urban and structural analysis, developed by Christian de Portzamparc since the 70s through clear projects, competitions and studies, which led to changes in methods, allowing a multitude of practical applications its main theoretical research and analysis. In its renewed vision of the urban structure, which he named the “open block”, his work focuses on research and is focused on the quality of living spaces and understanding of the city. Of singular buildings redesigned to urban planning, the city is one of the founding subjects of his work, which develops parallel and intersects on three major themes: the landmark buildings, towers, and neighborhoods from the island to the development of large cities.

BUILDINGS SYMBOLS
Buildings often become symbols of urban reference points, symbols together, creating a landmark in the large urban landscape. Through these large singular buildings, poles of attraction in the city, Christian de Portzamparc creates environments where interior and exterior spaces interpenetrate, catalysts of the dynamics of urban landscape. Christian de Portzamparc has a real passion for music, which made him participate since the 80s in a series of competitions for music and dance, as School of the Paris Opera Dance in Nanterre, France, (winner the price of Silver bracket 1988), the Cité de la Musique in Paris, France, the Philharmonie in Luxembourg or Cidade das Artes in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

DISTRICTS AND THE CITY
Neighborhoods and the city are a major theme of Christian practice and intellectual contribution of de Portzamparc in the current architectural debate.The recognition of the central importance of infinitely subtle human context in which local conditions are “wheat to the mill,” its interventions operate at different levels, both as an architect in the purist sense that as that urbanist.

TOWERS
The towers created by Christian de Portzamparc is the result of his research on the verticality and sculptural dimension, crystallized around the characteristics of prismatic shapes. From the city to the object, Christian de Portzamparc is working on towers since its first project in 1974: a covered water tower vegetation, designed for a new town, Marne-la-Vallée, France, a landmark poetic; in 1991, its sculptural Tour de Lille, a singular object built on a station in the neighborhood “Euralille” Rem Koolhaas (completed in 1995).The most widely recognized example is the LVMH Tower in New York, United States (completed 1999) (Business Week & Architectural Record Award in 2006), followed by competition for the Hearst Tower in 2000, soon accompanied by the tower residential 400 Park Avenue in Manhattan, New York, United States, approved by the City Planning in 2004 and the demolition of the site began in December 2011. another tower, One57, is under construction in New York, which should be completed in 2014; an ultra-luxurious hotel will occupy the first 20 floors of this tower 300 meters high, with 135 super-luxury condominiums, some of which offer stunning views of Central Park and the “skyline” of New York. The headquarters of the bank Societe Generale, the Granite Tower (completed in 2008), in the district of Paris – La Défense, with 180 meters high, is the first high building certified sustainable development in France (Label HQE French equivalent LEED certification in North America).

In 1994, Christian de Portzamparc is the first French architect to be awarded the highest distinction in architecture, the equivalent of the Nobel Prize, the Pritzker Prize at the age of fifty. It is also Commander of Arts and Letters, Officer of the Order of Merit, Knight of the Order of the Legion of Honour, Grand City’s Architecture Prize of Paris 1990 Silver Medal 1992 Grand Prix national Architecture 1998 and Honorary Member of the American Institute of Architects (AIA). Planning Grand Prize is awarded to him in 2004. In 2006, the College of France creates 53rd chair dedicated to “artistic creation”, by Christian de Portzamparc was the first owner.