SARA ISLIM TOMCZAK
NOTTINGHAM TRENT UNIVERSITY
Ba Hons INTERIOR ARCHITECTURE & DESIGN
CLAUDE PARENT
THE OBLIQUE SURFACE
Claude Parent is a revolutionary figure of avant-garde architecture in France. Parent is very well known for creating interiors and architecture with the heavy use of the oblique surface. He was one of the first people to look at architecture and living without furniture. He wanted to explore the realms and extent that you could push interior design to live comfortably without assets.
Parent was the first person in design to push the oblique surface to its extents and test the limits of design. This both inspired and infuriated his opponents. His designs are timeless and to this day his work has influenced the prominent work of Daniel Liebskind, fluidity of Zaha Hadid and the work of Parent's star student Jean Nouvel.
Parent’s work was the start of something that hadn’t been done before and was the begining of the iconic and super modernist era of design. His creative flair was applied to designing commercial building s such as supermarkets clad in cement which looked like huge cliff right through to nuclear power plant.
“Everything started with the idea of building things in an unbalanced way, with the idea of using a sloping floor” – claude parent
The main things that influenced parents work were his visits to old disused army bunkers. He became absorbed with the fluidity of the slopes and the lack of the horizontal surface. This is when the idea of the oblique truly inspired him.
Although he was the most thriving architect of his time he was also very much unknown, almost a silent mind in the field, like a hidden gem.
The oblique surface gave parent great satisfaction. He designed and spoke of the slope with great enthusiasm, explaining how it can encourage social interaction and relationships. The main question Claude Parent was searching to the answers for is;
“Consider how boring it is within our homes. The kid stays in the assigned kid’s room while the grown-up sits on an inherited couch
in another room. We’re completely overfurnished. What would it be like on the other hand, if space were understood more playfully,
more free, if movement and being in a space also could mean climbing, reclining, sliding?” What would happen, Parent asked, if you
make people group in ways different to those required by the given social parameters of “chair”, “table”, “sofa”, “bed”, etc? Can
furnitureless architecture affect dynamics between people?
In doing so he completely remodelled his own home, replacing all furniture with slopes where he would sit, lay and feel at one with the natural slopes of nature. He was the first person to apply Derrida’s theory into design, by applying a playful interior into an existing building without damaging the permanent foundations and structure.
Parents approach could be applied to suit design for disability through applying oblique surfaces as ramps for accessibility in a contemporary fashion. These ramps would need to be accessible by the impaired individual them self and compliant with the building regulations. The oblique surface is delicate in some instances and allows the user to be at one with the form making them feel part of the architecture, giving them a sensual and personal experience.