In Quest of Meaning: Revisiting the discourse around “non-pedigreed” architecture

The title of the current contribution is “In quest of meaning: revisiting the discourse around ‘non-pedigreed’ architecture”. As a brief introduction, I would like to project the following two images. One is Villa Arpel, while the other is the district of Le Vieux Saint-Maur in Paris. Both images come from the celebrated movie “Mon Oncle”, by Jacques Tati. On the one hand, there is the state-of-the-art designed house, bearing all the principles of the dominant International Style, and on the other, a Parisian neighborhood that represents all that the Modern spirit stood against. The villa consists of the perfect act of rupture against historical continuity; it is a building designed by the sole figure of a pedigreed architect that embraces innovation. On the contrary, the district has nothing to do even with the act of design itself; it is an accumulation of different edifices that count back several generations of builders with no academic training. Throughout the film, the viewer is repeatedly exposed to their contradictions; the director emphasizes the restrictions that the Villa imposes on its tenants, whose relief comes only in the loose, “non-pedigreed” environment of the old district. While living in the Villa appears to be depressingly comical, life on Le Vieux Saint-Maur seems to fulfill better the needs of human dwelling. By eavesdropping on the worries of its time, the film sympathizes with Architecture’s postwar struggle for self-redefinition, implying that responses could be found by examining our anonymous architectural heritage. It is thus representative of a certain “quest” in which “non-pedigreed” architecture plays a meaningful role.