Lines of Flight

An exhibition devoted to the experimental French architect Claude Parent strikes a balance between his tough-minded seriousness and inspired lunacy.

Claude Parent, Ville: Satellit n°3: classique, 2006 Courtesy the Claude Parent Archives

Speed, beauty, and violence were Claude Parent’s birthright. His father was an aeronautical engineer in the early years of French aviation and his mother owned a furniture shop; born in Neuilly-Sur-Seine in 1923, he came of age during the Nazi invasion and occupation. His career as an artist-architect was defined by a kind of slashing, insouciant militancy: a self-drawn cartoon from late in his life features himself, brushy mustache and all, kitted out in medieval armor, skewering an opponent’s proposal with a lance. Of his approach (learned in part while apprenticed to Le Corbusier in the early 1950s) Parent is reported to have said, “One must arm oneself to defend every point.… The slightest detail can suggest you haven’t sufficiently thought through your ideas.”

The architect’s rigorous devotion to an elegantly manic formalism is currently on full display at Soho architecture gallery a83, where the exhibition Claude Parent: Oblique Narratives No. 1 fea…

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