Frédéric Borel graduated from the Ecole Spéciale d'Architecture in 1982, and won the "Programme Architecture Nouvelle" competition the following year. He opened his own agency in Paris in 1984. He then designed two housing units on Rue Ramponeau and Boulevard de Belleville which, by making the most of the spatial areas formed by traditional enclosed courtyards, are symbolic of a new architectural hedonism. The buildings on Rue Oberkampf (1993) and Rue Pelleport (1998) are more radical, forming actual narratives of forms revealing the genius loci of these working-class neighbourhoods, and seemingly taking this approach to its climactic limit. These outbursts of coloured volumes respond, in a strange way, to the more compact and internalized blocks of the public facilities which are asserted in relation to nature and city alike, resembling calm, serene masses. The Centre des Impôts / Tax Offices in Brive (1999) thus appear to be floating, like a transatlantic liner, well removed from the urban bustle. The University at Agen (1998) and the school on Rue Moskowa (under construction) are like fractured, suspended monoliths, while the Lognes Lycée (also under construction) forms a unifying skyline, in relation to the fragile and chaotic silhouette of this new town. Drawing on the Paris experienced and described by the Surrealist poets as a place seething with secret spaces and places, a collage of eclectic factors, capable of giving rise to unlikely happenings and unexpected meetings at any given moment, these constructions all attest to a special approach to the urban issue. Where most buildings comply with continuities and are neatly arrayed, these fragmented and unitary forms, always involving a form of rupture, strive to produce new community-oriented places and new centres of attraction around which social life may be condensed. This principle of active architecture is also at work in recent neighbourhood development projects. In Vienna, on the Brasserie Otakring site (1998), and in Athens, on the Long Walls site (1997), spaces given over to specific atmospheres intersect, and are overlaid on one another, beneath the benevolent masses of levitating blocks, forming a luxuriant city dedicated to walking and wandering, luxury and voluptuousness.

Richard Scoffier

Perched halfway up Rue Pelleport, at the crossroads of a cluster of adjacent streets, this small apartment building immediately surprises the onlooker by its formal and chromatic busyness. This abundance, which here indicates a generosity that the approach to the building does not belie, responds to the very keen attention that Frédéric Borel has paid both to the organization of the housing units and to the setting in which this project stands–the heterogeneous context of a neighbourhood with lively topography and disparate constructions. The project brings together volumes and parts of coloured planes into a concretion whose unusual outer cladding becomes a surface of exchanges with the features adjacent to the building : a 17-floor highrise tower, scattered buildings of old Ménilmontant and those of Rue Pelleport, all forming a homogeneous corridor. Frédéric Borel thus, and to the contrary, puts back together a unit and a mass which are both independent and binding : a building intentionally designed as a moment of incorporation and openness, like an urban event.

This is a simple construction, an elongated monolith, poised on a forest of V-shaped posts. But lurking behind this apparent simplicity is a certain persistent complexity. The outer structure of this block is covered with coloured fragments which, by reducing the impact of the outlines, offset the might of the suspended mass. This design, painted in the bluish hues of distance, means that at certain times of day the building is totally absorbed by its site ; at other times, on the contrary, by creating unlikely depths, it comes across like an event, imploding the monolithic mass in a whole host of slivers. The basic gesture thus remains as if suspended, favouring an atmosphere of osmosis with the site. The various parts of the programme create a sequence with a fluid succession of differentiated ambiences. The green space and the library, which seems to slide towards the backdrop, form a world removed from time, filled with levitating volumes, a garden of sciences put together like a "Garden of Delights"...

Palais de Justice de Laval
Concours, 1996

An enclosure of protective granite wraps three sides of a clearing whose slope extends into the depths of the project on the banks of the nearby river Mayenne. Under this gently sloping garden, folded and indented by a glass cylinder linking forecourt and the "Salle des pas perdus" or Main Hall, the various spaces are dynamically organized in relation to an axis of symmetry running through the composition in such a way as to establish a balanced and tranquil whole, which is neither peremptory nor soothing, and thus tallies with the solemnity of the premises. Out of this garden suspended between sky and earth, there rise two blocks which contain the courtrooms. Frédéric Borel thus comes up with an arrangement which condenses the history of judicial sites and the mythical tree of St. Louis in contemporary glazed offices. Borel's project is neither a temple to justice inspiring fear and defiance, not an administrative facility rendering the quintessential role of the legal institution commonplace ; rather, it strives to be part of the site and represent a dignified and calming object, at once stable and open, swathed in a certain strangeness while at the same time remaining familiar.

Crèche Valmy
Rue des Récollets, Paris 10^ème
(en cours de réalisation)

In the middle of a block filled with dense vegetation, the Crèche des Recollets comes clearly across as an accumulation of pure shapes. With its subtly expressed character and its simple volumes, this project contrasts with the elegant and refined city buildings, at once fragmented and articulate, usually built by Frédéric Borel. As if, when faced with nature, it involved experimenting with a more direct and more conceptual formal style. A structure of opaque blocks squeezed in an extreme way against one another, as if levitating on glass crystals. With few means, the project comes across as the expression of two pairs of contradictory ideas, attraction and expansion, heaviness and weightlessness. In the very movement with which the solid upper forms jostle about an extremely dense invisible centre, the inner quality of the ground-floor opens inexorably towards the outside, beyond its glazed partitions. This minor project, free of affectation and mannerism, and relentlessly informed by oxymoron –that rhetorical figure of speech that lends structure to many works by this architect– reconciles the opposites in a poetic ambiguity that is as deep as it is unfathomable.

 Frédéric Borel (*1959)

1982 – Diplômé de l'Ecole Spéciale d'Architecture, Paris
1983 – Lauréat du concours "Programme d'Architecture Nouvelle - PAN XIII"
1985 – Création de l'Agence à Paris

Principaux Projets et Réalisations

2000 – "Ecole Maternelle de la rue Moskowa" Paris (en cours) ; "Crèche Valmy" rue des Recollets, Paris (en cours)
1999 – "Théâtre à Ancenis" (concours)
1998 – "Centre des Impôts" Brive (réalisé) ; "131, rue Pelleport" Immeuble de logements, Paris (réalisé); "Université d'Agen" (réalisé) ; "Quartier Ottakring" Vienne, aménagement urbain (lauréat des 2 phases concours)
1997 – "Longs Murs" Athènes, aménagement urbain (projet)
1996 – "Palais de Justice de Laval" (concours)
1990 – "113, rue Oberkampf" Bureau de Poste et logements, Paris (réalisé)
1986 – "100, Bd. de Belleville" Immeuble de logements, Paris (réalisé)

Principales Publications de Frédéric Borel

1997 – "Parfaire la ville, même si parfois on la bouleverse" Ville-Architecture n°3, Paris
1996 – "Densité, réseaux, événements" Mini PA n°15, Pavillon de l'Arsenal, Paris ; "Le singulier, le volume, l'identité et l'altérité" Bloc : Le Monolithe Fracturé, catalogue d'exposition VIème Mostra Internationale d'Architecture de Venise, éditions AFAA/HYX, Orléans
1992 – "Le dessin et l'architecte : Excursion dans les collections de l'Académie d'Architecture" éditions du Demi-Cercle/Pavillon de l'Arsenal
1990 – "Architecture active" Ouvertures, catalogue d'exposition, Arc-en-Rêve, Bordeaux
1984 – "Romainville : Le déplacement comme élément constitutif de l'espace" Pan XIII : Construire la banlieue, Ministère de l'Urbanisme, Paris

Bibliographie sélective

2000/1989 – Nombreuses revues françaises et internationales (L'œil, GA, Architectural Review, Bauwelt, AMC, l'Architecture d'Aujourd'hui, DBZ, Costruire, Architektur Aktuell (Vienne), Architectural Design, etc.)
1999 – GA Documents n°59
1998 – "Re-Création : 21 architectures en France à l'aube du XXIème siècle" (1998/2000 : exposition itinérante en Amérique Latine) AFAA / Ministère de la Culture, France/Argentine ; "Premises : Invested spaces in visual arts, architecture & design from France : 1958-1998" Guggenheim Museum, New York ; "Paris côté cours : La ville derrière la ville" Pavillon de l'Arsenal, éditions Picard, Paris
1997 – "Paris des faubourgs : Formation transformation" Pavillon de l'Arsenal, éditions Picard, Paris ; "Made in France 1947-1997" Petit journal de l'accrochage du musée, Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris
1995 – "Par exemple" catalogue de l'exposition (itinérante) Ifa, éditions Interéseaux, France/Allemagne
1994 – "Three French Architects" (O. Decq et B. Cornette, M. Kagan, F. Borel) catalogue de l'exposition au RIBA, Londres, éditions A3 - Architecture Art Association, Paris ; "Un lieu, un architecte : 113, rue Oberkampf" éditions du Demi-Cercle, Paris ; GA Houses n°42, Japon
1990 – "Le Jour se lève" 100, Bd de Belleville, Olivier Boissière, éditions du Demi-Cercle, Paris
1986 – "Albums de la jeune architecture : Frédéric Borel" Ministère de l'Urbanisme, Paris