Lauded French modernist Paul Andreu died in Paris on Thursday, October 11. He was 80 years old. While the architect, designer, engineer, painter, and writer wore many hats, he was best known for his futurist airport designs across the globe, from Paris to Jakarta to Cairo.
Andreu's first completed building is likely his most famous. After graduating from Paris's École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts (studying in the architecture studio of Paul Lamache) in 1968, he was appointed head of airport works for Aéroports de Paris Ingénierie, a subsidiary of Aéroports de Paris. Six years later, at age 36, his first work of architecture came to fruition: Terminal 1 at Charles de Gaulle Airport in Paris, which is designed in the shape of an octopus, encompasses a doughnut-shaped central building with seven satellite terminals radiating from it. Tube-like escalators are suspended within the circular void of the central building and move travelers between its floors, weather-protected. Andreu would go on to complete more than 40 global airports, including Abu Dhabi International Airport and Kansai International Airport in Japan. In the late 1990s, he expanded his reach to China, becoming responsible for the design of several of the world's best cultural attractions in the country, including the Shanghai Science and Technology Museum in the Pudong district and the National Centre for the Performing Arts in Beijing.
"What I am looking for in any project is its internal coherence and intelligibility, but at the same time its relationship with the outside world," Andreau told France's Académie des Beaux-Arts when he was made a member in 1996. "All living work leaves the hands of the architect incomplete and must be entrusted to the elements, the light, the wind, the water, to finish it."
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