Hervé Baley
Single chair, circa 1963
HERVÉ BALEY (1933-2010)
Atypical, Hervé Baley and Dominique Zimbacca (1928-2011), two architects with singular itineraries, produced an original built work, crossed by strong convictions, but unknown.
Students of free workshops at the École des Beaux-Arts between 1950 and 1954, they oppose the dogmatism of modern architecture and the influence of Le Corbusier and it is in the work of Frank Lloyd Wright, who spreads slowly in France, that they forge their hope in a sensitive archi- tecture.
The reforms of architectural education in France after May 68 will help to make more visible a hitherto minority approach. Hervé Baley, professor from 1968 to 1990 at the Special School of Architecture, defends, in his workshop Sens and Space, a vision of architecture based on experience and the intimate relationship to space.
In a context of constant material difficulties, Baley and Zimbacca will build about twenty houses and buildings, mainly in Ile-de-France, be- tween 1959 and 2000. The individual housing will be for them the ex- perimental ground of a design. organic architecture. The desire to apply the processes of nature to architecture takes in their realizations very different forms but keeps the same tension towards an ideal of harmony between the man and the space he inhabits.
