Atelier Pierre Thibault

Through environmentally incisive responses to the needs of clients in urban, regional and wilderness settings, Pierre Thibault’s practice has been distinguishing itself since 1988. Primarily active in landscaping, and cultural and institutional design, his penetrating vision and finely honed vocabulary have earned him citations and awards in Québec, Canada, the United States and Europe.

The design mastery the firm has developed, particularly within the last ten years, is the result of Pierre Thibault’s personal and continued research into the inherent dialogue between architecture and the environment. The quality of his projects is also the result of rigorous follow-up at every stage of a project’s realization, from design to completion.

Biography
Pierre Thibault
A 1982 graduate of the School of Architecture at Université Laval, Pierre Thibault founded his firm in 1988. His first major project, the Musée d’art contemporain de Baie-Saint-Paul (1992), received an Award of Excellence from the Ordre des Architectes du Québec (OAQ). In 1996, he received the Ronald J. Thom Award for Early Design Achievement from the Canada Council for the Arts, which awarded his the Prix de Rome in Architecture the following year. Théâtre de la Dame de Coeur (also in 1997), received much attention: honourable mention at the 43rd Annual Progressive Architecture Awards in the United States, honourable mention at the OAQ Awards of Excellence, and the Governor General’s Medal. In 1999, at Printemps du Québec à Paris, his installation De l’igloo au gratte-ciel transposed a kilometre of Québec landscape into the Jardin des Tuileries.

Thibault then received a number of mandates for cultural facilities, including the Jean-Pierre Perrault choreographic space (today Circuit-Est), the Musée des Abénakis, and the National Capital’s museum storeroom. The mandate for AEterna Laboratories (1999) marked a breakthrough into the private sector (Burton-Dompark showroom, Cossette offices, Infopresse agencies, and, most recently, Caisses Desjardins). His major accomplishement is the Val Notre-Dame Cistercian Abbey, a mandate won by competition in 2004. Finally, Atelier Pierre Thibault, a firm of ten employees, has designed almost sixty private residences over the past fifteen years; the architect has gained aq following in and stamped his signature on the genre, starting with the Villa du lac du Castor (2000), and he has also gradually become involved in the search for new solutions to multiple dwellings, such as the atypical Cohabitat in Québec City (2014).

Thibault has had a number of solo exhibitions, including Temps et Matérialité , which toured in France and was presented at the Canadian Centre for Architecture (CCA), and Refuge, at the Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec. He has participated in the Milan Design Triennale and a number of group exhibitions, including Laboratoires (CCA, Montreal, 2002), Substance over Spectacle (Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery, Vancouver), Sixteen Canadian Pratices (Canada House, London), and Les Archis-Fictions de Montréal : Six villes invisibles… (Maison de l’architecture du Québec, 2006-08). Thibault has been a professor at Université Laval since 2008. He has been a guest professor in Geneva (2001), Nancy (2002), Montreal (UQAM), and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT, 2003, 2004). He has given lectures in numerous cities around the world (among them Paris, Stockholm, Taiwan, and Fairbanks, Alaska), at the Architectural League of New York and at the Royal Institute of British Architects in London. Since 2011, he has been a member of the Conseil du patrimoine culturel du Québec.

Thibault’s projects have been widely published in specialized magazines in Europe and North America (Casa da Abitare, Dwell, Beaux-Arts, Architectural Record, and others) and covered by the major Quebec media. They have been the subject of a number of television reports and a documentary, L’espace que j’ai vu, by Anne-Marie Tougas, selected for the Festival International du Film sur l’Art.

To present his approach, Thibault has published Temps et Matérialité (Les Heures bleues, 1997), Maisons Nature (Éd. La Presse, 2013) and Maisons Paysage (Éd. La Presse, 2014).