Didier Fuiza Faustino (F)

The central dimension of Didier Fiuza Faustino's line of thinking is the body. Not the body as a reference machine, but the body as a spatial component. For how is a space to be envisaged other than through its relationship with the body using it? So this involves taking the interactions between them into account, as well as the potential for action of each one, prior to any design. The area to be grasped is that of perception, as attested to by a series of works which challenge and question appearance, tactileness, and visual and physical instability. There is also the area of displacement, like choreographic containers where the itinerary is one of the component parts of the architecture introduced. Lastly, and logically enough, there is the area of the interstice and the infinitesimal. In considering the links between two worlds, is one not trying to grasp the intangible and the space-time factor that joins them together (or separates them)?

Be it through his architectural projects or his explorations in the area of the visual arts - which reciprocally enhance one another - Didier Fiuza Faustino thus gets us to enter a physical dimension whose body is the atom, and whose architecture the interface. He examines our senses and their extensions in the constructed space at the risk of damaging them. Although precariousness is not really a condition of his work, his attachment to this concept prompts him to see his role and his projections in a state of impermanence. He is keen to be an agent provocateur rather than an emissary, and consequently wants above all to incorporate the whole dysfunction as a spatial production vehicle.

In the research carried out, there is actually an underlying, political stance, which runs counter to order and tidiness. After flirting in his early phases with an ambient movement encouraging a certain "urban guerilla" tactic, this is now being sought in greater serenity, but there is still a definitive emphasis on "vicious actions", as is shown, for example, by the insidious distortions of the video In, trans, ex (1997) and the perverse reading of diplomacy for the Portuguese embassy project in Berlin (1998). It is also expressed in the critical reading of our patterns of behaviour and our relations with others and our environment. The accentuation of desire and exhibition, as well as of the inquisitive eye, rooted in everyone, thus informs projects such as Personal Billboard (1999). Intimacy is plumbed to its limits and challenged in relation to our contemporaneity, new methods of communication and expression surrounding us, and our emerging desires.

The fact is that this context is the very context of the representational methods chosen, nevertheless, in an investigative approach, aimed at using the medium above all as an exploratory tool. The sort of immateriality emanating from the video and computer imagery presented contrasts with the (epi)dermic world built in tandem with the projects, but it paradoxically asserts the recurrent line of thin-king in all of Didier Fiuza Faustino's work, which prompts us to question our place and our role in this world, through our relationship to the space constructed in its immediacy and in its temporal structure.

Marie-Hélène Fabre

This is a flexible membrane that connects two individual houses : two intersecting accesses merge as one by means of a "single-surface" footbridge. This space is conceived on several scales, which overlap with as many issues :

- Scale of the urban
This is an urban interstice whose status questions urban rules and regulations and the concept of ownership : a double extension which calls for two building permits. Co-ownership or mere extension?

- Scale of the building
This is therefore the extension of the two buildings, an almost organic excrescence which permits a change of state : a "twofold" development and no longer a simple footbridge.

- Scale of the individual
This is a space which informs the individual about his own movement, and this so that he will become aware of his body, his environment and this transition from one state to another.

Ambassade du Portugal
Berlin, Allemagne
avec Marie-Hélène Fabre et Stephane Metay
Concours, 1998

By refusing any cultural and aesthetic stereotype, the aim of this project is to propose a vision revealing the twofold dimension of diplomacy, at once the science of war and peace. Like an apparition, the building brushes against the troubled waters of history. The horizontal and vertical distribution of the elements of the programme is achieved in accordance with their function (chancellery/residence) and their degree of confidentiality (public/private/secret-defence) ; public and private elements [external or internal functioning] are thus exposed to the eye or, conversely, hidden. The visible part of the building, a three-headed Hydra looking down on the Goddess of Victory and the Reichstag, is embedded in the glasslike surface of a water garden to achieve its depth. its fragile base, a trapped space, is a point of stability and imbalance, a precarious mooring for a building with an unpredictable history. At once bunker and joystick, the embassy rises up as an impertinent form, destined to be altered : from angel blue to dirty khaki, its walls revolve, lending their transparency to time. After light, secrecy.

CCRG, Centre Culturel de Ribeira Grande
Ribeira Grande, Archipel des Açores, Portugal
avec Pascal Mazoyer et Jean-Luc Ngo
Concours, 1999

Three ideas govern this project : itinerary, instability and interstice. On the one hand, the itinerary, for it is a matter of encouraging the user's relationship with the space around him. His movements dictated by the museum's collection and temporary exhibitions offer an opportunity to hone his awareness about the architecture in which he is ceaselessly evolving in new ways. On the other hand, instability, for it is a matter of setting references within references, the better to stimulate the senses and proceed with a kind of hyper-sensorialness. And last of all interstice, for it is a matter of offering a fragmented view of the building, its architecture, and its environment, in order to stir up curiosity and encourage the itinerary. It is also a way of offering diminishing scales and visual outlets which are so many moments of dizziness and breathing. This is realized by the association of three structure-giving elements : a wood frame incorporating the building within its lightness, a façade wall on the left like a skin, whose outlines cannot quite be grasped, and a system of "platform-floors" offering spatial permeability and freedom. With this overall arrangement, a specific relationship is established between the building, the visitor, the city and the works on view. Each element interacts on the other by way of an exacerbated or simply stimulated perception : a relationship, in the end of the day, akin to that of an independent system.

Personal Billboard : an Urban Peep Show
Habitat concept

This is an individual house fitted with a huge outer screen which shows video sequences of its occupants. This interface between interior and exterior, private and public, operates within, but also beyond the framework of an interplay mixing exhibition and voyeurism. Conceived as an extension of the personal sphere, this interface enables the individual to literally project himself into the urban setting and blend in with it, like part of a landscape. The individual house thus occupies a "living space" with blurred boundaries, another dimension, exploring an area which thus spills over from the area used by webcams. As an instrument of possibles, Personal Billboard is a component of the territory in which it fits, at once the reification of a virtuality and a factor of reflection and reflectivity of relations with others and space.

Didier Fiuza Faustino (1968)

1995 – Diplômé de l'Ecole d'Architecture de Paris-Villemin
1996 – Architecte indépendant au Portugal et en France ; Co-fondateur du "Laboratoire d'Architectures Performances et Sons" (LAPS) à Paris
1997 – Co-fondateur de l'Atelier Pluridisciplinaire "Le Fauteuil Vert" à Paris
1998 – Co-fondateur, co-directeur et directeur artistique de la revue "Numeromagazine" Lisbonne

Principaux projets et réalisations

1999 – "Urban Rhizome – hotel for the aliens" Roswell Housing Competition (mentionné) ; "CCRG" Centre Culturel de Ribeira Grande, Açores (concours) ; "Personal Billboard : an Urban Peep Show" Habitat concept (projet) ; "Alice's House" Habitat concept (projet)
1998 – "Vertigo" Appartement, Paris (réalisé) ; "Ambassade du Portugal à Berlin" (concours) ; "Immersion" Vidéo
1997 – "Ensemble résidentiel et piscine", Sainte-Anne, Guadeloupe (concours sur invitation / Deuxième Prix) ; "My First House" performance, Leiria, France ; "In, Trans,Ex" Vidéo
1996 – "To Experience Fragility" Shinkenchiku Residential Design Competition, Japon ; "Body Building" performance/vidéo

Expositions récentes

1999 – "(A)casos (&) Materiais", CAPC (Centro de Artes Plasticas de Coimbra)
1998 – "Interferência 01", Lisbonne, Principe Real
1997 – "Beau comme un Camion" Exposition Collective, Europride, Paris

Bibliographie sélective de Didier Fiuza Faustino

1999 – "Architecte Borderline" Charles-Arthur Boyer, Art-Press n°245 ; "Tra Body Art and Architecture" Francesco Careri, Spacio & Societa n°85 ; "Tirer un Homme de sa Torpeur" et "Expressions" Parpaings n°3, France
1998 – "Mode d'Emploi" Visuel n°3/4 ; "Mésarchitectures" Numéromagazine n°00, Lisbonne