August 19, 2019 -- Ferrier Marchetti Studio (FMS), pioneers in the development of sensual, sustainable architecture, are proud to announce their participation as exhibitors at the upcoming Centre de Design de l’UQAM in Montreal, Canada. FMS founding partners, Jacques Ferrier and Pauline Marchetti, will present Entre-deux, Une Architecture de la Résonance, highlighting the firm’s humanistic approach to urban infrastructures.
Dates: September 18 to October 27, 2019
Opening: Wednesday, September 18, 2019, 6 p.m.
Curator: Louise Pelletier, Director of the Centre de Design, Philippe Lupien, architect and professor at the UQAM Design School, and Pauline Marchetti, partner, Ferrier Marchetti Studio
Ahead of the exhibition, Jacques Ferrier conducted a student workshop at UQAM in May during the International Design Week. The resulting work of the students, reflecting design principles instilled by Ferrier, will also be on display during the exhibition.
“Centre de Design de l’UQAM provides us with an opportunity to closely interact with local industry and culture,” notes Jacques Ferrier. “We look forward to sharing what we do, and how we do it, and to potentially opening new doors for future collaborations.”
A unified vision
The UQAM event also marks the firm’s first international exhibition since its global rebranding as Ferrier Marchetti Studio in July, consolidating the work of its founding partners, associates and collaborators under the umbrella of a single, unified vision.
In 1993, architect, urban planner, author and lecturer, Jacques Ferrier, founded his own architectural firm in Paris. The firm, Jacques Ferrier Architecture (JFA), soon gained international recognition for its forward-thinking approach to educational, cultural, tertiary, and leisure development projects. With offices in Paris, Shanghai, and Lisbon, JFA’s expertise established the firm as leader in sustainability and environmental projects.
In 2010, Jacques Ferrier partnered with Pauline Marchetti to create Sensual City Studio, a research laboratory and separate venture based in Paris devoted to humanistic and sensitive approaches to urban architecture.
Ferrier Marchetti Studio
In July 2019, after years of applying Sensual City Studio research to the rethinking of project briefs and advancing their design components, Jacques Ferrier Architecture and Sensual City Studio merged operations. Rebranded as Ferrier Marchetti Studio (FMS), the value-added firm combines inventive architecture, innovative research and philosophical principles to advance design concepts most relevant to the 21st century.
Ferrier Marchetti Studio is a laboratory of creativity and foresight, where human senses, emerging technologies and sustainability rise to the forefront of all aspects of architectural master planning. FMS embraces architecture as a radical agent of change and reinvention, fostering new interactions between building and user, and between materials and the environment.
“Beyond the design of aesthetically-pleasing objects, our architecture is about leveraging opportunities to create positive and meaningful relationships between buildings and the people that occupy them,” explains Pauline Marchetti. “It’s all about contributing to a more holistic, sustainable and sensual world in which to live.”
Guiding principles
Ferrier Marchetti Studio’s approach to architecture resides upon a framework of eight pillars of design. Resonance focuses on meaningful relationships between people, spaces and places, while Synergy with climate espouses architecture that embraces ambient climactic conditions, rather than denying them. Useful aesthetics focuses on a project’s value as a measure of impact and purpose, rather than of its luxurious materials. Senses and pleasures places human experience at the heart of all new projects, while Details that matter celebrate the detailed craftsmanship of the micro, as well as the macro. Built landscapes infuse biodiversity and create ecosystems linking cities with nature, while Mobility and balance explore the design of mobility infrastructures envisioning fresh modes of travel. Finally, Meaningful contexts ensure that FMS designs provide relevant, efficient, purposeful and long term social/civic meaning.
Architecture of Resonance
In his book, Resonance, philosopher Hartmut Rosa writes that “everything in life depends on the quality of our relationship to the world”. In presenting Entre-deux, Une Architecture de la Résonance, Ferrier and Marchetti will apply that philosophy to discussions surrounding reconsideration of urban infrastructures from the perspective of sustainable development. The exhibition will showcase the firm’s philosophy and body of work, portrayed through a series of supporting materials including a manifesto, photos, videos, models and drawings. FMS will also unveil a reinterpretation of the façade of the Metropole Rouen Normandie, one of the firm’s most recently completed projects, through an important artistic installation.
‘Husenses’ (human senses) architecture must rise to the forefront in order to provide people with unique, rich and sensitive city experiences, while foregoing geometric urbanism in lieu of the ‘sensual city’. Ferrier Marchetti Studio believes that fulfillment of that vision, on all scales, will result in an architecture of resonance.
While Centre de Design de l’UQAM is the firm’s first exhibition in North America, Jacques Ferrier has lectured in Chicago (AII), New York (AIA Center for Architecture), Boston (Harvard Design School), Washington (Alliance Française), Montreal (Université de Montréal), Toronto (Ryerson University) and Ottawa (National Gallery). The September exhibition provides the firm with an opportunity to further its collaborations in North America, and to apply its design concepts to projects in new markets.
In recognition of the firm’s important work, Ferrier Marchetti Studio will also receive the proud support of the Department of Cooperation and Cultural Action (SCAC) of the Consulate General of France in Quebec for the exhibition at Centre de Design de l’UQAM.
About Ferrier Marchetti Studio
With offices in Paris, Shanghai and Lisbon, Ferrier Marchetti Studio is staffed by a multicultural team of 60 architects with various competencies, all of whom share a humanistic vision of urban life. FMS approaches each new project as a unique story, where collaboration within the firm’s network of art, architecture, urban planning and social science professionals precedes all other forms of planning or technical documentation. Based on deep analysis of user experiences, shifting trends in large modern cities and shared journeys of distinctive discovery, the firm endeavors to predict their effect on architecture, and vice versa.
Ferrier Marchetti Studio’s award-winning portfolio includes cultural projects such as the Expo 2010 France Pavilion in Shanghai. The firm also designed the prestigious notable public buildings including the Collège de France in Paris, the French International School of Beijing and the headquarter building of the Paris Region and the future greater Paris metro stations.
