The confrontation between the radically poetic world of Julien Blaine and the radically technological world of Rudy Ricciotti's Pont du Diable (a footbridge spanning the Hérault gorges in the south of France, both a superb aesthetic gesture and a genuine technological feat).
French
architect and engineer of Italian origin, Rudy Ricciotti (born in 1952 in Kouba, Algeria, lives and works in Bandol in the Var region), recipient of the Grand Prix National de l'Architecture in 2006, is notably the architect of the
Mucem in Marseille. Ricciotti spent his childhood in Camargue after his family left Algier. He learned about the world of construction by accompanying his father, a bricklayer, to building sites, but he also quickly discovered the emotional and formative power of the works of great artists, writers, filmmakers and others, which would secretly nourish his work as an architect. The author of numerous books on architecture, he is now also a recognised thinker on the ethical and aesthetic issues that should motivate contemporary architecture.
A graduate of the École des ponts et chaussées engineering school, Romain Ricciotti (born 1977) has headed the Lamoureux & Ricciotti design office with Guillaume Lamoureux since 2008.
Since the early 1960s, Julien Blaine (born 1942 in Rognac, France, lives and works in Marseille) has been developing a semiotic
poetry, which can be defined as post-
concrete and post-
fluxus. Above all, his poetry is a physical experience: a
performance.
