Built to be Determined: Odile Decq on Opening Possibilities and Taking Risks

By Julia Gamolina

Odile Decq is a French architect and urban planner for whom international recognition came in 1990 with her first major commission: Banque Populaire de l’Ouest in Rennes, France. Since then, she has been faithful to her fighting attitude while diversifying and radicalizing her research. Being awarded The Golden Lion of Architecture during the Venice Biennale in 1996 acknowledged her early and unusual career. Other than just a style, an attitude or a process, Odile Decq’s work materializes a complete universe that embraces urban planning, architecture, design and art.

Odile Decq has been teaching architecture for the past 25 years. In France, she was Head of l’École Spéciale d’Architecture (ESA) in Paris from 2007 to 2012, after teaching there for 15 years. Following this experience, she created her own school in 2014 now located in Paris, the Confluence Institute for Innovation and Creative Strategies in Architecture, accredited by the Royal Institute of British Architects. In her conversation with Julia Gamolina, Odile talks about starting out as a young architect in France and choosing how she presents to the world, advising those just starting their careers to take risks and not follow the status quo.

JG: How did your interest in architecture first develop?

OD: When I was in high school in France, I had a drawing teacher who would tell me about art, architecture, and the decorative arts. I was first interested in art, and so after high school, that’s what I decided to study. I didn’t think I could study architecture because I didn’t know any women at the time who were doing it! Those were the times, in the 70s - it was unclear for me if women could do it, could become architects.

Wow.

Yes! I wasn’t in Paris yet, I was in a small city in France, and there, nobody believed that this could be possible, my father especially. But then I saw the architecture students in my university, saw that there were women, and said, “Ok, I can do it.” I applied for the school, passed my exams, and started.

What did you learn in studying architecture?

At the time in the 70s in France, the school was very particular. This was after ‘68, and the school had been transformed - my studies were not focused on learning a subject matter, but rather, on creating myself as a person, figuring out who I was. I was doing drawings, photos, videos, and mostly, learning about expression. I did more of this in the beginning, than architecture itself.

By interrogating myself, by searching, I discovered what architecture was for me, and my interests became much more focused. I built myself as someone who could navigate a very precise context, but also someone creative and determined. I learned to be strong-willed, and to really achieve.

What did you do first when you graduated?

I worked for myself immediately after I graduated. I’ve never worked for an office. Because I didn’t want to [laughs].

Why not?

Because most of the architects who were working were men, and I didn’t want to work for one.

Fair enough. Tell me about some of your first projects.

My first projects were small transformations of houses for relatives, or other people I met in France. It was all step by step. I also did a lot of urban planning - just after my diploma, I came to L’Ecole Politique in Paris to study urban planning. Thanks to that, I succeeded in finding work in little villages and cities in the countryside, and this is how I started.

“...once I went to the selection committee and asked why I wasn’t selected, and they said, ‘We already chose a woman - we can’t choose two.’”

You’ve had your own practice for the entirety of your career - what were the main milestones for you, the moments of transformation, of evolution?

Everything was very important, every day [laughs]. Because when you start on your own when you are very young, nobody believes that you can do it. It was very hard, and I had to fight all the time.

I had to be determined, to convince people, and finally, I started to do some projects. The more important part was that all this was in the 80s in France, a time during which the government decided to open competitions for young architects. I am from this moment, when the field had opened to the young, so I did many competitions, and at the end of the 80s, I won one! It was for a bank, which I built and finished during the 90s. This project got a lot of awards, and was published everywhere, and that led to a lot of the next things. After ten years of trying to survive, finally something happened. But it took ten years of trying to survive and convincing people that I am an architect.

How did you convince people?

I can’t even begin to answer that [laughs]. I was everywhere, going to every event. I was a young woman, and there weren’t many of us, so I stood out because I was one of a few.

At first, the people of the field were looking at me in a very patronizing way, in the vein of,“You are a little woman, you are just a young woman.” I just had to continue to do things, continue to go, and consistently remind them that I belonged, that I could be there, that I am an architect, and that I’m a strong architect.

Even when I entered big competitions - I started to do so from the very beginning - and I got second place, other architects were telling me, “But second place is great for a woman! Don’t worry, you will get the next one.” It was always, “You will get the next one.” So once I went to the selection committee and asked why I wasn’t selected, and they said, “We already chose a woman - we can’t choose two.” This type of thing happened all the time. There could be six or seven winners, but having two out of those be women was considered too much! You just have to keep going, continue, and prove that you are an architect. Just keep doing it.

Antares Barcelona, image courtesy of Studio Odile Decq.

Rooftop Pool by Antares Barcelona, image courtesy of Studio Odile Decq.

What have been some of the other challenges in your career?

One was very early - to build only with steel and glass. I was very interested by the precision you could achieve with steel, especially at a time in France when most things were done in concrete. I demonstrated what you could do with steel consistently, and eventually got many awards for it. No one had done that before, this was at the beginning of the 90s. So a challenge I always faced, and wanted to encounter myself, was the technical challenge.

On the flip side, what have been the biggest highlights for you?

My favorite moment is tomorrow [laughs]!

That’s a great answer. Anna Wintour always says that, that her favorite issue is the next one.

Yes! I don’t look back, and I’m not nostalgic of what was before. I just look ahead.

“My favorite moment is tomorrow.”

What do you see ahead? What do you see for those that are just starting their careers, for women just starting their careers today?

I think things will be different, or at least I hope that things will be different, although sometimes I’m not sure. I see a lot of young women that are not very self-confident. I think it’s the downfall of their education - we need to educate young people to be confident and bold.

I know that there are now many more women in the field, but there are still very few reaching the top positions in offices. This is still a problem, because we are still always facing mostly men in the profession of building. You work with engineers, who are mostly men. You work with your clients - who are heads of banks and other institutions - and they are men as well. The managers of the construction companies are men, the workers on site are men, so we are always working with mostly men, from all angles. And for us, it’s not a problem to be facing men all the time, for me and you. But for them to be facing us - it can be a problem for them. Their problem is that they don’t know how to talk with us, and they need to adapt themselves, which they are not willing to do. Some people out there are just fine, and can do that, but some still don’t know how to work with us.

You make an amazing point - we talk a lot about how there aren’t enough women in positions of power in architecture, but we don’t talk about how in all of the other professions we work with, there is a dearth of women as well. It’s scary to think about.

All the people that surround us are men! So we just have to keep pushing.

Who are you admiring right now? Who is out there doing important work that will have meaning and instigate change for future generations?

Anyone that is creative, focused on inventing something, and looking forward to the future. I don’t always admire them as humans, because sometimes they are not good humans [laughs], but I admire what they do. And, I always make the distinction between the person and what they do. I separate the two.

“...we are still always facing mostly men in the profession of building. You work with engineers, who are mostly men. You work with your clients - who are heads of banks and other institutions - and they are men as well.”

What advice do you have for those wishing to push their creativity, their designs, further? How can people become better designers?

You have to start at the very beginning, with school. The schools of today are too focused on training professional architects. For me, the purpose of architecture school should not be to train professional architects, but to educate in architecture. There is a difference.

To be educated in architecture helps you to do something new, something that you want, in and with architecture. When you only focus on professional studies, you look at conditions that already exist - you don’t project yourselves to a vision of other futures, and you don’t look to the world widely, you just look at your field. And this is not good. So, to help young people be more creative, more inventive, and to find their own way, you have to open the schools of architecture much more widely, and focus on interdisciplinary possibilities.

I couldn’t agree more - I was lucky to go to a school that I feel did that for me, and exposed us to a lot of different things, and it has certainly paid off. There should be no limits to what you can do with an architectural education.

There are only a few schools in the world that do that. In the end, this is why I decided to launch my own school, to open the students’ minds to much more than they were. I’m really glad that we started this. My students are mostly international, coming from all over the world, which is so good for the brain, and so good for creating and thinking.

Odile in her studio, photography by Franck Juery

That was what was so great about Cornell - the international presence was fantastic. My peers were from Singapore, Colombia, Poland, and so were the professors.

Absolutely - you mix the cultures, you discuss, you interact. It’s all so important.

Looking at life after school, what advice do you have for those that are just starting in the field?

Don’t hesitate to take risks. There is nothing wrong with taking risks - you will fail, but that’s OK because you just keep going. Just go. Go, don’t follow the status quo, and don’t look back. And don’t think that you won’t achieve what you want - you will, you just have to be a little patient [laughs]. It’s a long road.

“...to help young people be more creative, more inventive, and to find their own way, you have to open the schools of architecture much more widely, and focus on interdisciplinary possibilities. ”

My last question for you is something I can’t help but ask, and I know our readers will be super interested to know too - you have such a distinct look! Probably the most unique in our field. Please tell us about how your public image evolved.

[Laughs] I started to do this at the beginning of my thirties. It’s been so many years now that I don’t feel that I am any different, but I know others do. When I was a student, I was totally blonde - can you imagine? So I was already different [laughs], not many other blondes in architecture. But then I moved to black! I discovered that it was easier, an easier way to be, and it was also during the eighties, during the punk and gothic movements. It was really the time of doing all that.

What’s interesting is that I discovered that when I started to look the way I do, that it was a great filter. When I was meeting prospective clients, people that would react negatively to me, I knew that those would be people I shouldn’t be working with anyway! Because if they are not receptive to my look, they would not be receptive to my ideas. Those clients would want something much more “normal”, much more traditional, much more conservative - and that wasn’t me. It was a great way to classify people. My look gave me strength and the possibility to be even more bold, and to do what I want!

That’s a fantastic message.

At the beginning though, it wasn’t easy - but you have to be who you want to be! That’s why time in school is so important - your school has to let you be who you want to be. When you start your studies, at eighteen, you don’t know who you are or who you will be, but that’s a great time and opportunity to explore and to create yourself. But if your studies are only repeating things that people are already doing, you’ll only build yourself as that. If you want to be creative, you have to show that you are creative, and be strong.