Openings

First monograph on Paris-based h2o Architectes is one of France's leading up-and-coming firms, highlighting their approach to tasks and locations that is marked by careful interpretation of historic layers, featuring also a new essay by celebrated Swiss architect Bernard Tschumi. Text in English and French. This book brings together 29 projects from the past ten years, completed and ongoing, designed by Paris-based h2o Architects. The presentation is arranged by thematic categories that stem from the firm's singular approach. The tasks vary greatly in type, scale and individual context: From a housing development in Paris to a hotel in Rio de Janeiro, from a temporary school pavilion and a timber construction for a vineyard to the rehabilitation of Paris's Museum of Modern Art in the eastern wing of Palais de Tokyo and other large public spaces. h2o Architectes' proposals are united by an approach that is always both radical and sensitive. Interviews conducted by architect and writer Fanny Léglise and essays by architect and anthropologist Miguel Mazeri and architect Bernard Tschumi shed light on various aspects of the firm's practice, vision and philosophy. The book also features poems by French writer and poet Frédéric Forte, composed in situ at several of h2o Architectes' building sites. Photographs, renderings, and plans round out this first comprehensive monograph on one of France's leading up-and-coming architecture firms. Text in English and French.