Architecture Competition Gaudi La Coma Artists’ Residences 1st prize winners – Collectif Carré Noir

We’d like to take the opportunity to introduce you to the 1st prize winners of our "Gaudi La Coma Artists’ Residences" competition – Marc Viaud
, Victor Dussap
, Félix Roudier-Canler
 and Nathanaël Pinard from France!

1st prize winners from France

After several individual collaborations of our members, our architect’s collective Carré Noir has been officially founded and established in 2021, between Paris and Lyon.

We are former classmates from Clermont-Ferrand School of Architecture. Simultaneously with our early practice as architectural firm employees or as freelances, we decided to answer to competitions together, with the long-term goal of creating an architectural collective. Our education has awakened us to territorial governance issues and to the interest of developing innovative urban genesis processes. The Collectif Carré Noir members are all architects, with various abilities, including the patrimonial field, architectural representation, and territorial project approach.

Thus, competitions for young architects seemed to be a perfect milestone in our development. Our Collective is the result of a shared desire to live this common experience.

Brief information about the projects that you/your company have been involved with. For instance, what scale have you focused on/preferred, any significant projects where the company/ individuals have been involved?

Some of our members already collaborated on other competitions or calls to idea in the past. Marc Viaud and Victor Dussap, associated to architect Dana Roxana Hosu, won the 3rd price for “Site Temple” competition organized by ARKxSITE. The same team, together with Nathanaël Pinard, also won a special mention for innovative proposal for the competition called ReUse Italy “The Fallen Church”. Individually, Félix Roudier-Canler won the “72h Axo Battle” competition from Non-Architecture organizer, the competition “Waterless World” from the same organizer, obtained a special mention for the competition “Working From Home” and participated to the exhibition “Et demain on fait quoi ?” (And tomorrow, what do we do?) in the Pavillon de l’Arsenal. These last two successes have been obtained jointly with the architect Chloé Bordjah. For his part, Marc Viaud obtained an honourable mention for the “Trans Siberian Pit Stops” competition, won the “ConstruirAcier” competition and obtained the french prize for the XXI e edition of “Iacobus” competition. Finally, Victor Dussap won the 3rd prize in the international competition for the Romanian Pavilion for the world exhibition of Dubaï 2020, together with Dana Roxana Hosu. Lastly, once officially founded, the Collectif Carré Noir has been awarded in 2021 as Runner-Up into the Europan 16 competition, in the site of Limoges (France) for its project ”The Cure: Anatomy and Regeneration of a Critical Metabolism”. At the same time, our practice as project managers into architectural firms gives us a diversity of experience. One of us worked in Romania, others integrated Parisian firms to participate in architectural and urban large scale projects – such as hospitals, campuses, embassies or laboratories -  while some of us specialized in illustrator performances, an explorative tool to create tomorrow’s imaginary.

What does architecture mean to you and what is the role of an architect in your society?

We are highly aware about the social role of architects. We aim to design militant and involved projects to preserve and expand subtle relationships nurtured between citizens, living, inhabited milieu and geological and landscaped territories in which they interact. 
Synergistic processes thought over long-term periods are key to obtaining virtuous dynamics for the service of humans, of the living and of common goods. Our multi-scalar approach sets the territory and its ethical and ecological development in the heart of our design. We chose to build our collective to defend shared values and a committed architecture.

Why do you participate in architecture competitions?

We are extremely glad about this result, and we hope that this success will enable us to develop our collective. At the very least, the competition will help us create common basis for our urban and architectural approach, and debate about the shared values that we want to express across our architectural practice.

What advice would you give to individuals who struggle to decide
whether it would be beneficial for them to participate in architecture
competitions?

This kind of competition is a key opportunity to express freely your full creative potential. It could give you visibility and would also let you experiment on potential innovative approaches on the projects.