The "dream part" of Anne Démians, first woman architect of the Academy of Fine Arts

On Wednesday, under the Cupola of the palace of the Institut de France, which brings together five Academies, this tall, 59-year-old blonde woman will receive her academician's sword during an official ceremony.

It is Sebastião Salgado, member of the photography section of the Academy of Fine Arts, who will give the speech of his "installation", the first by a woman in the architecture section where she was elected on June 23 2021 in the chair previously occupied by Roger Taillibert (1926-2019).

"It's a great honour. I did not seek it but, if it can facilitate the future of young architects, it makes me very happy," said AFP Ms. Démians, jacket and black leather pants , in his architectural firm in the XNUMXth arrondissement of Paris.

Wood, metal, cardboard, translucent domes... Unique models rub shoulders with beautiful books and a minimalist design bathed in daylight.

Bauhaus

At the Academy of Fine Arts, she hopes to "find the dimension of the Bauhaus, this great moment of architecture which is the synthesis of all the arts".

Architecture is his "vocation". "I didn't for a moment consider another job," she says.

"As a child, I saw my grandmother draw, she traveled a lot and I imagined that architecture was drawing, imagining the world, dreaming it. It's something I tried to preserve because I believe that it allows you to always go a little further than received ideas", adds this graduate of the Ecole Nationale Supérieure d'Architecture de Versailles, who taught and created her first agency in 1995.

It now has 30 employees, architects, engineers and designers.

"Black Swans"

For her, architecture is "an art of use and therefore of comfort" which "contributes, more than any discipline, to aligning our ways of living with the powerful transformations of the city".

The technical, climatic, social, economic, industrial parameters "are an integral part of the act of creation and, the most difficult thing is to transcend them to give them meaning", she underlines.

But "without excessive technical or energy injunctions which make people dependent on the economy" and by drawing inspiration "from all the initiatives of civil society", she adds.

In Strasbourg, its "Black Swans", housing and offices built on a former industrial site, are an example, she says, explaining their name by the swans who lived near the place and the "romanticism" of the film eponymous by Darren Aronofsky with Natalie Portman.

In "resonance with history", the buildings integrate outdoor spaces, covered roofs with adjustable light depending on the temperature, she explains.

She signed with the architects Francis Soler, Finn Geipel and Rudy Ricciotti a manifesto for a construction without gap between private housing and social housing.

In Paris, his agency was asked to redevelop part of the Hôtel-Dieu, a stone's throw from Notre-Dame Cathedral in Paris, into a medical research center, a project which includes a large nave at its heart. .

It has recently been working on the transformation of the Vilnius station in Lithuania, in order to make it "energy self-sufficient": equipped with "vertical photovoltaic panels" on its roof "because of the snow", it will also be "a landmark in the night," she said.