Fabien Vienne (18 February 1925 - 31 March 2016) was a French architect, urban planner, and designer. Born in

Paris Paris () is the Capital city, capital and List of communes in France with over 20,000 inhabitants, largest city of France. With an estimated population of 2,048,472 residents in January 2025 in an area of more than , Paris is the List of ci ...

, Vienne initially pursued a technical education and graduated from the École des Arts-Appliqués. Throughout his career, he has contributed to furniture design,

urban planning Urban planning (also called city planning in some contexts) is the process of developing and designing land use and the built environment, including air, water, and the infrastructure passing into and out of urban areas, such as transportatio ...

, construction systems, original architectural projects and scenography design.

Early life and influences

Vienne was born in Paris in 1925. In the 1940s Vienne discovered the

Modern Movement Modernism was an early 20th-century movement in literature, visual arts, and music that emphasized experimentation, abstraction, and Subjectivity and objectivity (philosophy), subjective experience. Philosophy, politics, architecture, and soc ...

and its French precursors. He joined

Le Corbusier Charles-Édouard Jeanneret (6 October 188727 August 1965), known as Le Corbusier ( , ; ), was a Swiss-French architectural designer, painter, urban planner and writer, who was one of the pioneers of what is now regarded as modern architecture ...

's former collaborator Jean Bossu in the task of rebuilding the war-ravaged country.

Career development

In the early 1950s, Vienne was moved to

Réunion Réunion (; ; ; known as before 1848) is an island in the Indian Ocean that is an overseas departments and regions of France, overseas department and region of France. Part of the Mascarene Islands, it is located approximately east of the isl ...

, a French overseas territory in the

Indian Ocean The Indian Ocean is the third-largest of the world's five oceanic divisions, covering or approximately 20% of the water area of Earth#Surface, Earth's surface. It is bounded by Asia to the north, Africa to the west and Australia (continent), ...

. There he inspected Jean Bossu's construction sites and established a local office. This experience abroad left an impression on Vienne, and upon his return to France he founded his own firm, SOAA (Société d'Organization d'Architectes Associés).The company is still operating.

Vienne's approach

Unlike many architects who focused on subsidized housing during a period of rapid economic growth, Vienne received commissions primarily from private developers, mostly construction contractors. This allowed him to explore alternative paths and demonstrate a sense of adaptability and invention. One of Vienne's achievements is the development of the EXN construction system. This versatile and cost-effective system was used to build hundreds of wooden houses in La Réunion and continues to be used today. Vienne's capabilities were revealed through previous research and construction projects, such as the Trigone system (1968) used in resorts such as Vald'Yerre (1971). Vienne's capacity to adapt is seen in the various project he has undertaken. These include houses, schools, office buildings, factories, universities, apartment complexes, hotels and health centers. Vienne's architectural solutions are known for their suitability and purposeful approach.

Philosophy and legacy

Geometry Geometry (; ) is a branch of mathematics concerned with properties of space such as the distance, shape, size, and relative position of figures. Geometry is, along with arithmetic, one of the oldest branches of mathematics. A mathematician w ...

and the principle of economy are two fundamental concepts that underpin Vienne's work. For him, geometry is not just a compositional tool but an

epistemology Epistemology is the branch of philosophy that examines the nature, origin, and limits of knowledge. Also called "the theory of knowledge", it explores different types of knowledge, such as propositional knowledge about facts, practical knowle ...

— a way to understand and express the underlying laws of the world. The principle of economy goes beyond mere accounting in the art of building; it is about finding the essence of a problem and substantiating it in a solution that brings that essence to light and life.

References

External links