Eric Lapierre

Design Critic in Architecture

Éric Lapierre (b. Tarbes, 1966) is an architect, teacher, theoretician, writer, and curator. He studied at the School of Architecture Paris-Belleville and runs the firm ÉLEX (Éric Lapierre Experience) which he founded in Paris in 2000. This award-winning firm has been recognized nationally and internationally for the quality of its built tectonic objects, as well as for the theoretical dimension of its production. ÉLEX builds in France and Europe. The last buildings are Le Point du Jour art center in Cherbourg; Chris Marker student residence and buses amenity in Paris; and logistics platform in Toulouse.

Éric Lapierre is a professor at the École Polytechnique Fédérale in Lausanne (ÉPFL) and at École Nationale Supérieure d’architecture (ENSA) in Marne-la-Vallée Paris-Est. He teaches both project design and theory. He has taught at Accademia di Architettura in Mendrisio (2012-2015), in UQAM (2013) and UdM (2014) in Montréal, and at Sint Lukas in Ghent (2015).

He regularly publishes articles and books about the contemporary condition of architecture. Among them Architecture of the Real (2003); Paris, Architecture Guide 1900-2008 (2008), also available as an app on App Store Guide Paris Archi; Le Point du Jour – A Concrete Architecture (2008); Éric Lapierre – If the Form Vanishes its Roots are Eternal (2018). Economy of Means – How Architecture Works ? will be available in October 2019 as the catalogue of the exhibition Lapierre curates as his personal contribution for the Lisbon Architecture Triennial.

He is currently chief curator for the fifth Lisbon Triennial of Architecture (October-December 2019) that he has entitled Poetics of Reason and that aims at defining the specificity of the rationality of architecture.

Éric Lapierre is also involved in performance through the production of concerts at his construction sites – he works regularly with Lee Ranaldo (Sonic Youth), Thurston Moore (Sonic Youth), Magik Markers, Six Organs of Admittance, Jean-François Pauvros, Jean-Marc Montera, Theo Hakola, among many others.

Projects