French architect José Oubrerie dies at 91

French architect, professor, and scholar José Oubrerie died on March 10, age 91. Oubrerie was famously often called certainly one of Le Corbusier’s closest protégés who accomplished Église Saint-Pierre in Firminy, France. At his time of loss of life, José Oubrerie was the final residing apprentice of Le Corbusier, after B. V. Doshi died final yr.

Oubrerie’s passing was confirmed by a spokesperson from Ohio State College’s Knowlton College, the place Oubrerie was professor emeritus. Heartfelt remembrances about Oubrerie had been shared on social media after his loss of life by Dora Epstein Jones, Martin Summers, and different architects.

Todd Gannon, an structure professor at Ohio State College and AN contributor, described Oubrerie as a “towering determine in our discipline, whose catalog of constructed work, although not in depth, is comprised virtually completely of masterpieces,” Gannon informed AN. “The French Cultural Middle in Damascus, the Miller Home in Lexington, the Firminy church, these astonishing buildings bear the stamp of Corbusier’s affect, however extra importantly display Jose’s unique eye and deft hand, his irrepressible mischievousness, and his refusal to play the a part of dutiful protégé. He additionally was a legendary trainer, whose instruction, although peppered with pithy, closely accented exclamations (‘it’s fairly good,’ or, extra hardly ever, ‘fantastique!’), proceeded much less by saying than by doing.”

Gannon continued:

“[Oubrerie] tore at his college students’ fashions and scribbled over their drawings, excising the extraneous with the pressure of a twister. Then, simply earlier than he delivered the now-obvious coup de grace, he’d cease, flip to you with a sly smile, and intone, ‘You see? It might be good!’ Above all, José liked structure. His infectious enthusiasm for nice design was as boundless as his disdain for gutless conventionality, which is probably greatest encapsulated in his distinctive pronunciation of the phrase ‘sheetrock.’ He was gregarious and hilarious, fearlessly opinionated, and sensible as a whip. Although we’ve misplaced his one-of-a-kind voice, the reminiscence of his unbridled passions—for nice meals and wine, nice dialog, and the distinctive pleasures of structure, literature, music, and artwork—stays with us, and can persist as a mannequin for us all.”

Oubrerie was born on November 9, 1932 in France. Between 1946 and 1951, he studied portray on the École des Beaux-Arts in Nantes, after which structure at École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Paris.

After finishing his research, Oubrerie joined Atelier Le Corbusier at 35 Rue de Sèvres in Paris in 1963, simply 18 months earlier than Le Corbusier’s loss of life in 1965. With Le Corbusier, Oubrerie helped design Église Saint-Pierre in Firminy, an experimental French commune simply south of Lyon. Then in 1964, Oubrerie started designing a brand new hospital in Venice, a venture that by no means got here to fruition after it was cancelled in 1972.

Le Corbusier died in 1965, and Oubrerie took over Église Saint-Pierre, which wasn’t accomplished till 2006. When Église Saint-Pierre was completed, Peter Eisenman stated it was crucial construction constructed since 1980.

After Corb’s loss of life, Oubrerie designed Centre Le Corbusier in Zurich, a museum devoted to the late architect which was accomplished in 1967. That yr, the late architect launched his personal workplace in Paris, Atelier José Oubrerie.

Three years later, in 1970, Oubrerie was registered within the Ordre des Architectes in Paris, France and have become an AIA honorary member. In 1988, he accomplished the French Cultural Middle in Damascus, Syria. In 1992, Oubrerie accomplished the Miller Home in Lexington, Kentucky the place he was dean of the College of Structure on the College of Kentucky School of Design. By 2005, Oubrerie was certainly one of 4 remaining apprentices of Le Corbusier: the opposite three had been Latvian architect Jerzy Soltan (1913–2005), Chilean architect Guillermo Julian de la Fuente (1931–2008) and Indian architect Balakrishna Doshi (1927–2023).

All through his profession, Oubrerie held a bevy of instructing appointments. He taught at Ohio State College, College of Illinois at Chicago, College of Kentucky, New York Institute of Expertise, Columbia GSAPP, Cooper Union, the Polytechnic College of Milan, and the Ecole Nationale Superieure des Beux-Arts in Paris.

One in every of Oubrerie’s final commissions got here in 2015, when he was invited by Steven Holl to design Chapel of the Mosquitoes close to Holl’s residence in Rhinebeck, New York. Oubrerie described his unbuilt Chapel of the Mosquitoes as a synthesis of concepts from two of his most important constructed works: the 1986 French Cultural Middle in Damascus and the 1992 Miller Home in Kentucky. Oubrerie’s exceptional tenure took heart stage in a 2015 ebook revealed by Oscar Riera Ojeda Publishers, Structure With And With out Le Corbusier: Jose Oubrerie Architect.

“Day by day we see architectural initiatives of all around the world, constructed or from competitions, being shut variations of one another, youngsters of the pc, implausible capabilities of manipulating geometry, of manufacturing magnificent photos,” Oubrerie as soon as stated. “Far more that what Walter Benjamin thought …the digital now replaces the mechanical and infrequently produces the cloning of architectural objects … So, making structure turns into managed by a way, by this subtle instrument, because it was one time outlined by the 30 and 90 diploma triangles and the mayline elementary devices which produced fairly often extra of the identical … So I suggest a perhaps completely different manner of utilizing them at bay, anchored in poetics.”