Catherine Guiral De Trenqualye

Focusing primarily on French graphic design of the early 1950s onwards my research has concentrated on the eclipsed figure of graphic designer Pierre Faucheux (1924–1999). His activities ran across the post-war decades in France, forming a visual landscape which also maps the cultural variations taking place within French intellectual life.

 Faucheux was one of the major figures in editorial design in France. Effectively renewing this particular field of graphic design, he practised throughout the second half of the 20th century, leaving multiple traces which can be understood as experiments that revisit the ideas and techniques of the avant-garde. He coined a term – “general dynamic topology” (“topologie dynamique généralisée”) to describe this utopian territory. The use of such terms as “topology” or “territory” underlines to an extent to which space, in its multiple meanings, is inseparable from Faucheux’ work. After meeting Le Corbusier in 1947, his practice navigated between that of an inventive graphic designer and that of an architect “without title”. 

 The moves made by Faucheux – from his architectural practice as maître d’œuvre to his multiple works as graphic designer – seem to call, at first sight, for the Deleuzian notion of deterritorialisation. A key concept I first used as a working tool, the notion of deterritorialisation is close to the idea of dépaysement, a term Faucheux used to describe his way of producing a “symbolic iconography” he multiplied for the many covers he designed.

The latter were witnesses to Pierre Faucheux’s will to constantly reinvent signs and forms within his field of expertise. In parallel, his work as urbanist was concentrated on the modularity of space and the guiding idea that space could be specifically tailored for its users. Building the structures of books and writing the silhouette of spaces, Faucheux’s work is the image of a constant movement between being an “architect of the book” and a “writer of space”.

Exploring this movement has guided the writing and the construction of a series of exhibitions which took place at international venues and galleries spaces. Each of these exhibitions has both interrogated the work of the designer and the role of montage as a means to explore exhibition design in relation to the literary form of the essay.