Forum Lecture: Top Down / Bottom Up

Monday, November 11, 2024 from 6:00 pm to 7:30 pm

• In-person event
• 50 Mackenzie King Bridge , Ottawa , ON , K1N 0C5

• Contact
• Maria Cook, maria.cook3@carleton.ca, 613-520-2600

Hubert Pelletier and Yves de Fontenay will present works from a top-down/bottom-up logic. On the one hand, the Pelletier de Fontenay studio in Montreal, Que. approaches architecture as an autonomous system and works with typological and historical models and references. On the other hand, there is the conviction that project specificities are always generative. The intersection between these two perspectives produces architectural objects that are clear and rigorous, but always contextual.

Pelletier de Fontenay is a Montreal-based architecture firm founded in 2010 by Hubert Pelletier and Yves de Fontenay. The studio has a strong design focus geared towards its growing portfolio of public projects, including museums, schools, cultural centres, and libraries. The studio is also involved in the design of private residences, housing, pavilions, exhibitions, and urban planning.

The studio’s approach is based on the principle that different conditions produce different architectural expressions. Designs are developed by navigating the tension between internal and external forces, treating architecture both as an autonomous system with historical references as well as a product shaped by project-specific factors.

This dynamic interplay results in rigorous yet always contextual architectural objects. This feedback loop between top-down conceptual logics and bottom-up emergent forces produces what they describe as relational objects: an architecture that forms intricate bonds to its site and program, while retaining an unmitigated conceptual coherence.