Cove image: Couvent Saint-François, Sainte-Lucie de Tallano © Thibaut Dini
Vernissage in the presence of the architect on Tuesday, January 30, 2024, from 6:30 p.m. to 9 p.m.
As part of this exhibition, Amelia Tavella will give a lecture on Thursday, February 22, at 7 p.m. at the Pavillon de l'Arsenal, 21 Boulevard Morland, 75004 Paris (Reservation required on pavillon-arsenal.com)
"The Mediterranean is my matrix. I come from there, that unique place. A child of the maquis, this is where I learnt the complexity of my trade as an architect. Sea, rock, my femininity embraced the femininity of that sea, working with delicacy, reweaving damaged lace, drawing inspiration from the sediments, the primal soft matter. My island taught me light, color, slope, constantly reminding me that there can be no valid creation without ethics and that history is the cradle of the present."
Amelia Tavella
La Galerie d'Architecture is an exhibition space dedicated to contemporary architecture, located in the heart of Le Marais, Paris. It supports and promotes current architectural creation, alternating between the work of the younger generation and that of established architects, landscape architects, or designers from around the world. The gallery has had the pleasure of hosting agencies such as Renzo Piano Building Workshop, OMA - Rem Koolhaas, and Shigeru Ban.
« The Mediterranean is my matrix. I come from there, from this unique place. Child of the maquis and the sands, I learned the complexity of my job as an architect here. Sea, rock, beach, my femininity embraced the femininity of this sea, exercising with delicacy, reweaving damaged lace, taking inspiration from sediments, soft, original material. My island taught me light, color, slope, constantly reminding me that there is no valid creation without ethics and that history is the cradle of the present. This is how my artistic approach is built, originally linked to my roots. »
Amelia Tavella was born in the heart of summer in Ajaccio. She considers her native Corsican island as a ma- trix. There she learns the importance nature, the urgency to protect it, to respect it. She experiences beauty, imbibes it, will seek it, always. Growing up on an island also means growing up on the sea. The gaze is fixed on the horizon, the reefs are shapes, the contours of the territory of lines, the crest of the mountains of drawings, the maquis a space in its own right.
Childhood is a proscenium. The desire for architecture preceded her studies which she followed at the Special School of Architecture in Paris.
Daughter, wife, mother, Amelia Tavella founded her agency in 2007 in Aix-en-Provence. Committed, free, resistant, daring, in 2016 she received the Young Woman Architect Prize, in 2017 the Pierre Cardin Prize from the Academy of Fine Arts. In 2018 the Choiseul Ville de Demain Palmarès salutes its innovative way of practi- cing architecture which it considers to be an art open to other arts.
Amelia Tavella invites the artist Pauline Guerrier, for her schools in Lumio, Villeurbanne and Cabriès, she collaborates with a historian and a socio-anthropologist for the Citadel and the Genoese city of Ajaccio, with the artist and videographer Ange Leccia for the preservation and development of the ruins of Nonza, and with the writer Nina Bouraoui for the castle of Nalys, stronghold of Châteauneuf-du-Pape, work commissioned by the Guigal family.
His work is multi-awarded. In 2019, she won the Born Awards - Social Impact Prize and then the Medium Prize of Regional ranking of Architecture in Corsica. In 2020 she received the Landscape Sensitivity Prize - Wood Sequence Palmarès, Idéat designates her in 2021 among the best architects of her generation then she is nominated for the European Prize of Architecture Philippe Rotthier “Genius Loci”.
At the origin, among others, of the Saint-François Convent which will be praised throughout the world for its copper “graft” on the granite that connects the past to the present, from the Henri Tomasi Conservatory in association with Rudy Ricciotti, from the rehabilitation from the Château du Seuil in Provence, from the Piton de Cabriès school, from the award-winning A Strega school in the depths of the maquis. She will in 2021 promoted to the rank of Knight in the National Order of Merit. 2022 the crown again: First prize during Tecu Architecture International Awards, Architecture Medal - Dejean Prize of the Academy of Architecture. Amelia Tavella proceeds like an archaeologist, each site seems to be xrayed, excavated, invested, to honor, extend what previously existed. She builds without undoing, she invents without denying. Attention to detail, esthete, ecolo- gist, hard worker woman, her projects embrace a form of poetry. Feminine and feminist, she is one of the rare women to the head of an agency.
The Mediterranean architect built in Corsica and after Corsica, from a French island to the French continent her works are respond, mirror works that bear a signature, Amelia Tavella has found her way. She has a print. She has her voice, her writing. His work is recognizable, admirable. It will take place in 2023 in Florence as part of theReuse the ruin student workshop then in Bologna for the YACademy one.
Its so-called “sensitive” architecture unfolds according to the place that receives it. Amelia Tavella never sepa- rates the building from the space itself already a work of nature or of the city. It is, each time, a form of wedding between what is and what will be. Her relationship with materials is sensual, so she chose the theme of Skin to articulate and illustrate the May issue. 2023 of the Italian architecture magazine IQD of which she is the editor-in-chief, a theme taken up in a round table at La Cité de Architecture and Heritage for Carte Blanche – City which in the same year housed the copper installation of its Convent Saint-François for the Duos of the architectural platform followed by a conference/debate with the architect barcelona Carles Enrich and the architecture critic Ivan Blasi.
Amelia Tavella is preparing a monographic exhibition at La Galerie d’Architecture (January 2024) and will be at the center of special issue devoted to Architecture d’Aujourd’hui in May 2024.
Her practice is multifaceted, her interventions precious, she is a judge for several prizes and stands out as a model for young architects. It opened the wall that separates disciplines. With Amelia Tavella, architecture summons sciences humanities, literature, photography, sculpture. Expressing the diversity of the world could be his motto.
The Corsican architect is a European architect since he is now in the running for the prestigious Mies van Der Rohe Prize 2024.
