Architect Dominique Perrault was inducted yesterday into Marc Saltet’s former seat by His Highness Aga Khan. The ceremony took place under the famous dome of the Academy in the presence of the other Academicians and French Minister of Culture and Communication Audrey Azoulay. At the end of the ceremony, Perrault received the sword designed by Gaëlle Lauriot-Prévost from Catherine Pégard, President of the Public Establishment of the Palace, Museum and National Estate of Versailles.

During his speech, His Highness Aga Khan mentioned the different stages of Dominique Perrault’s career and his architectural specificity. Here are some excerpts of his speech:
"Giving materiality to your dreams has always been, and will always be, an essential element of your inspiration and approach to architecture. You know how to create shapes and volumes – or landscapes, as you say – which translate your perception of the architectural value of the void, where Man defines it. You use the void in between buildings with the same care as the void inside the buildings. It seems to me (…) that you do not consider architecture as a sculptural volume to be admired from the outside but as a space where Man can live happily, mediate and create within."

Selected excerpts of Dominique Perrault’s speech - in which he pays tribute to Marc Saltet, follows in his footsteps:
"I used to walk every morning on Bonaparte street to go to the Ecole nationale des Beaux-Arts. Did I know at the time that I was falling within the same path of my predecessor? Did I know that the Pavilion Dufour’s redefinition would come to me?  Did I know that, years later, I would be inducted in his seat?
If we shared the same vocation, Marc Saltet and I did not really follow the same journey. However, it is the public commands that have prevailed both of our careers. Can an architect dream of a better democratization ideal when presided over by such a patron? Marc Saltet got General de Gaulle’s greatness; I had François Mitterrand’s. And when he was renovating the Trianon at Versailles, I was building, along the Seine river, the new national Library.

When I imagine the new Longchamp Racecourse in Paris, or the transformation of the Poste du Louvre, I know that as a man standing on the shoulders of giants, and in Marc Saltet’s footsteps, I lay my stone, raise my concrete bar and extend my metallic mesh on my predecessors’ works. The passing of time is often destructive. We contradict that, we build, and our constructions are revelations."  


The Sword

Designed by Gaëlle Lauriot-Prévost, the Academician Dominique Perrault’s sword freely renews its codes, through its shape, ornamentation and fabrication. The principle of this sword reveals a reinterpretation, a new meaning of the word "weapon". Rather than the definition of a classical instrument of attack or defense, here it is a celebrated, constructive statement: steel reinforces concrete in order to build a wall. Like an armature bar, the surface of the "blade" is regularly veined. At the handle of the sword, the veins are more abundant in order to facilitate its grasping. But its cone shape and the ornamental twists bring up a second imagery, the one of mythical creatures, which the unicorn is the emblem of.

This sword has been realized in close collaboration with the Sciences University of Aix-la-Chapelle. Its construction demanded state of the art steel technology: laser selective fusion. From a 3D model of the object, the fabrication method consists of a progressive fusion of metallic powder using high-powered lasers. This dust then becomes a solid, reversing the classical cycle of erosion. Constructive culture and fantasy are merged, between classical iconography and innovative technology. This unique object acknowledges the definition of the Academician’s sword: "to represent a symbol of dignity and personality".