A co-publishing a.p.r.e.s éditions / Centre national des arts plastiques.

This publication a été réalisée avec le soutien de l’École nationale supérieure d’art (ENSA) de Bourges.

About an architect, Yona Friedman, whose design for a utopia is nothing if not feasible.

Or an apartment on Boulevard Garibaldi, in Paris, at once a home, studio and archive where the artist’s thoughts and imagination are reflected.

Or a realised utopia that shows the capacity in everyone to create their own world.

Or organic décor that the artist donated to the Centre national des arts plastiques in 2013 and which is now part of the national collections.

Or a film made in the apartment where Yona Friedman intimately shares his philosophical, political, engaged and generous vision of the architectand the world in which we live.

Or it is a collection of texts penned by Sylvie Boulanger, Marie-Ange Brayer, Caroline Cros, Wim de Wit and Jean-Philippe Vassal, a selection of variations on Yona Friedman.

THE DVD:

“Animal Normal : Conversations avec Yona Friedman”

A film by Caroline Cros et Antoine de Roux.

Animal normal recounts the intimist conversation that Yona Friedman began with Caroline Cros and Antoine de Roux in 2007. Filmed in his apartment on Boulevard Garibaldi, probably his greatest visual masterpiece, Friedman shares with us his generous theory that posits that the individual can become the agent of improving their environment. Drawing on references as diverse as analytical or holistic thinking, cooking, natural laws, canine sensitivity, graffiti art and even ancient building practices, he conveys a vision of the world and of architecture in which improvisation, education, asymmetry, communication, creativity, immateriality and mobility are the vehicles of freedom. The interviews are punctuated and enriched by filmed sequences of the artist in action and old and recent artworks.

Caroline Cros is heritage curator and teacher of contemporary art at the École du Louvre in Paris (France). She has curated several exhibitions on Yona Friedman. Photographer, director and producer Antoine de Roux films artists at work.

THE BOOK:

Texts by Sylvie Boulanger, Marie-Ange Brayer, Caroline Cros, Wim de Wit and Jean-Philippe Vassal.

Sylvie Boulanger is an exhibition curator, publisher and researcher. She is director at the Cneai, France’s national center of contemporary art dedicated to publishing and printed art objects, Chatou (France). Marie-Ange Brayer is an art and architecture historian, heritage curator and head of the design and industrial prospective Department at MNAM-CCI at the Centre Pompidou, Paris (France). Caroline Cros is heritage curator and teacher of contemporary art at the École du Louvre in Paris (France). She has curated several exhibitions on Yona Friedman. Wim de Wit is adjunct curator of architecture and design at the Cantor Center for Visual Arts at Stanford University (USA). He had been head of the Department of Architecture and Contemporary Art at The Getty Research Institute, in Los Angeles (USA) from 1993 to 2013. Jean-Philippe Vassal is a French architect. He and his business partner Anne Lacaton set up the architectural firm Lacaton & Vassal.