Mujassam Watan Urban Sculpture Challenge #8 – Salwa Road Site – 1st Prize Winner: Mathieu Henri Pierre Nouhen

We’d like to take the opportunity to introduce you to the 1st prize winner of our Mujassam Watan Urban Sculpture Challenge #8 competition - Salwa Road Site – Mathieu Henri Pierre Nouhen from France!

Mathieu Henri Pierre Nouhen from France

Please tell us about your company (when it was founded, where it is based, how many employees, etc) Alternatively, if you do not have a company, please give us some insights on your own professional/academia background.

An architect who graduated in 2016 and based in France, I develop a practice at the crossroads of architecture, scenography and artistic installation. After working in Switzerland and in the south of France, I co-founded Studio Tephra, an association and laboratory dedicated to architectural research and experimentation. There my work unfolds as a continuous exploration of material, site and the memory of places, nurtured by the teaching I carry out in several schools of architecture.

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?

My practice spans a range of scales, from small cultural facilities to monumental in situ installations. It favours a situated architecture, where local material becomes the starting point of the gesture: slate, gleaned stone, burnt wood, suspended textile or concrete. Each project arises from an attentive reading of its site, its geology, its history and its uses, revealing its strata and the passage of time. From the ephemeral cabin to the landscape memorial, these interventions seek to project the visitor into the landscape, to frame a view, to create a space for contemplation.

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

Architecture holds a central place in contemporary societal issues. It must fully integrate its environmental impact and its symbolic reach. To build is to inscribe an intervention within a spatial and temporal environment, in dialogue with all the ecosystems it enters: social, cultural, faunal, floral and climatic. Urban sculpture is a natural extension of this: it gives a territory sensitive and narrative landmarks, able to bring a community together around a shared identity and to turn the experience of a place into a journey.

Why do you participate in architecture competitions?

Ideas competitions feed the conceptual dimension of my work and extend a practice of installation carried out for contemporary art festivals. Each site becomes the occasion for a new gesture, a new reading of material and landscape. This continuous dynamic of experimentation, research and reflection lies at the heart of my way of conceiving architecture as an open field.

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

Every practitioner must identify their own needs. Competitions are not necessarily for everyone: they are one of many ways to practise and think about architecture. Taking part is always rewarding, just as exploring all the other ways of building is, for there is no single path. Ideas competitions offer a structuring and motivating timeframe while giving concrete purpose to reflection, and they open up programmes and scales that are usually hard to access, from micro-architecture to monumental sculpture, keeping a practice of research through design alive.