Biography

Born in Algiers on 22 August 1952, Rudy Ricciotti founded his agency in Bandol, a small fishing village near Toulon. Trained as both an architect and an engineer, Ricciotti was awarded France’s Grand Prix National d’Architecture in 2006 and is one of the foremost representatives of a generation of architects combining great creative prowess with a genuine constructive approach. Among his many noteworthy projects in France are the Stadium de Vitrolles, which serves as both a concert venue and a sports arena, the Pavillon Noir / Centre Chorégraphique National in Aix-en-Provence, home to the Ballet Preljocaj, the repurposed Grands Moulins de Paris, an abandoned industrial mill in Paris, which was successfully converted into dormitories for the Université Denis Diderot Paris VII, the Musée des Civilisations de l’Europe et de la Méditerranée (MuCEM) in Marseille, and a new wing for the Musée du Louvre in Paris to house its Islamic art collection. Ricciotti has also designed projects outside France: the Footbridge of Peace over the Han River, connecting the city of Seoul to Sunyodo Island, the Potsdam Nikolaisaal, which is the new concert and event hall for the capital city of the German federal state of Brandenburg, the Nuovo Palazzo del Cinema in Venice, the Centre International d’Art et de Culture in Liège, and Les Arts Gstaad, the new cultural centre in this Swiss alpine village known for its classical music festival founded by Yehudi Menuhin.

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