Art is what makes life more interesting than art.
Besides his original profession, French architect Pierre Lietzer also works in metallography, where he analyzes the structure, the quality and the material of metals. To him, architecture is not an act of construction but a stance, a standpoint on which architects realize ideas rather than buildings. It is a concept interpretation in concrete material, while an engineer constructs objectively.
He wrote his MA thesis under the supervision of famous architect Louis Marin, engaging numerous questions concerning the definition of architecture with its fundamental elements. Lietzer later became a faculty member in the architecture department at the University of Strasbourg for 10 consecutive years.
In 2003, he completed his Doctoral studies and joined the university as dean of the faculty of arts with 2200 students, and as a research director who supervises thesis and students’ projects. As Nobel Prize winner Paul Valery had defined the term Poetic in 1935, Lietzer has merged the art of construction with the poetic side of art in a scientific- philosophic study. In his judgement, architecture consists of two boundaries, the aesthetic and the poetic:
- The aesthetic is the reception of the product, the critic, the palpable end result.
- The poetic is bringing the ideas into life, the concept, the creation.
His conducted research revolved around these concepts as guidelines in this domain, to direct any architect and provide the help in producing the product. It is a manual for every designer and architect, decomposing each element and concept, as well as highlighting the different eras of construction styles, to achieve the final stage of theory concretization.
Pierre Lietzer has been invited since 2006 to Lebanon, to participate as a jury member at different universities for senior projects. He admires the Lebanese culture and its richness, revealing that he had “never seen such beauty and hospitality elsewhere,†according to his words.
