HERVÉ BALEY (1933-2010)
Atypical, Hervé Baley and Dominique Zimbacca (1928–2011), two architects with singular paths, produced an original body of work, shaped by strong convictions, yet largely unknown.
Students at the free workshops of the École des Beaux-Arts between 1950 and 1954, they opposed the dogmatism of modern architecture and the influence of Le Corbusier. It was in the work of Frank Lloyd Wright, which gradually gained influence in France, that they found inspiration for a more sensitive approach to architecture.
The reforms in architectural education in France after May 1968 helped to bring this previously minority perspective into the spotlight. Hervé Baley, a professor at the Special School of Architecture from 1968 to 1990, championed a vision of architecture based on experience and the intimate relationship to space in his workshop "Sens and Space."
Amid constant material difficulties, Baley and Zimbacca built around twenty houses and buildings, primarily in Île-de-France, between 1959 and 2000. For them, individual housing served as an experimental ground for their design of organic architecture. The desire to apply natural processes to architecture took on many forms in their work, but always maintained the same underlying goal: achieving harmony between humans and the spaces they inhabit.
