Iwona Buczkowska (born 1953) is a

Polish Polish may refer to: * Anything from or related to Poland, a country in Europe * Polish language * Poles Poles,, ; singular masculine: ''Polak'', singular feminine: ''Polka'' or Polish people, are a West Slavic nation and ethnic group, w ...

-born French architect and

urban planner An urban planner (also known as town planner) is a professional who practices in the field of town planning, urban planning or city planning. An urban planner may focus on a specific area of practice and have a title such as city planner, town ...

. She studied at the Polytechnic School in

Gdańsk Gdańsk ( , also ; ; csb, Gduńsk;Stefan Ramułt, ''Słownik języka pomorskiego, czyli kaszubskiego'', Kraków 1893, Gdańsk 2003, ISBN 83-87408-64-6. , Johann Georg Theodor Grässe, ''Orbis latinus oder Verzeichniss der lateinischen Benen ...

and the

École Spéciale d'Architecture The École spéciale d'architecture (ÉSA; formerly École centrale d'architecture) is a private school for architecture at 254, boulevard Raspail in Paris, France. The school was founded in 1865 by engineer Emile Trélat as reaction against the ...

Paris Paris () is the capital and most populous city of France, with an estimated population of 2,165,423 residents in 2019 in an area of more than 105 km² (41 sq mi), making it the 30th most densely populated city in the world in 2020. S ...

. Buczkowska received the Gold Medal and Special Prize at the Fifth World Biennale of Architecture at

Sofia Sofia ( ; bg, София, Sofiya, ) is the capital and largest city of Bulgaria. It is situated in the Sofia Valley at the foot of the Vitosha mountain in the western parts of the country. The city is built west of the Iskar river, and ha ...

in 1989 for her project at

Le Blanc-Mesnil () is a commune in the northeastern suburbs of Paris, France. It is located from the center of Paris, between Charles de Gaulle Airport and le Bourget Airport. Name The name Le Blanc-Mesnil was recorded for the first time in the 11th centur ...

and the silver medal and the Prix Delarue in 1994 from the

Académie d'architecture The Académie d'Architecture () is a French learned society whose purpose is the recognition of architectural quality. Founded in 1840 as the Société Centrale des Architectes (; en, "Central Society of Architects"), the society was renamed Ac ...

for her collected work. In 2003, she received the Prix grand public de l’Architecture from the region Ile-de-France for her work at Le Blanc-Mesnil. She has been inspired by the theories of French architect and urban planner Jean Renaudie, as well as the way that towns were planned in the

Middle Ages In the history of Europe, the Middle Ages or medieval period lasted approximately from the late 5th to the late 15th centuries, similar to the post-classical period of global history. It began with the fall of the Western Roman Empire a ...

, the

Renaissance The Renaissance ( , ) , from , with the same meanings. is a period in European history marking the transition from the Middle Ages to modernity and covering the 15th and 16th centuries, characterized by an effort to revive and surpass ideas ...

and the

Baroque period The Baroque (, ; ) is a style of architecture, music, dance, painting, sculpture, poetry, and other arts that flourished in Europe from the early 17th century until the 1750s. In the territories of the Spanish and Portuguese empires including t ...

. Buczkowska is opposed to the segregation imposed by urban

zoning Zoning is a method of urban planning in which a municipality or other tier of government divides land into areas called zones, each of which has a set of regulations for new development that differs from other zones. Zones may be defined for a si ...

and to the functional urban layout proposed by the

Athens Charter The Athens Charter (french: Charte d'Athènes, Greek: Χάρτα των Αθηνών) was a 1933 document about urban planning published by the Swiss architect Le Corbusier. The work was based upon Le Corbusier’s '' Ville Radieuse'' (Radiant C ...

. She was innovative in her use of wood as a building material and advocates the use of

free plan In architecture, a free plan is an open plan with non- load-bearing walls dividing interior space. In this structural system, the building structure is separate of the interior partitions. This is made possible by replacing interior load-bearin ...

construction which facilitates movement through the building.

References

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* 1953 births Living people French urban planners Women urban planners French women architects Polish women architects 20th-century French architects 21st-century French architects Polish emigrants to France École Spéciale d'Architecture alumni 20th-century French women 21st-century French women {{France-architect-stub