In these painful moments I send to the family and friends of Renée GAILHOUSTET all our condolences for the disappearance of Renée GAILHOUSTET who, in addition to being a mother, was a remarkable architect full of talent and generosity in both her professional and personal life.
She marked the history of architecture by building for the users, by developing new concepts which were taken up and reinterpreted by others: architecture thought as a space of collective life, where each one finds its account, with not cells repeated ad infinitum, but residences drawn with the greatest care and thought individually, by integrating nature in the city, by creating urban paths in the built spaces and relegating the car outside of the pedestrian routes by putting the trade and the life in the built spaces.
It is for all these reasons that we awarded her the special Pioneer prize in the framework of the woman architect prize in 2014, we had on this occasion made a film about her that I send you.
(Personally I knew Renée Gailhoustet during our first European program on women in construction and she had come to choose reproductions of mosaics from Pompeii to illustrate the subject of the woman builder, and these are memories of mutual sharing and respect).
It is for her talent as an architect that she received the prize of the ROYAL ACADEMY of London where we were in September 2022 with her family and friends.
She also received during her lifetime the medal of honor of the Grand Prix de l’architecture in France in 2022 but it was a very late honor from France which could have done it earlier without waiting for her to be unaware of this award.
I could observe during the visits of her realizations, of which during the last one that we organized on December 16, 2022 the happiness that the inhabitants have to live in these spaces. and it is well there the success of Renee GAILHOUSTET
On behalf of all the women of the WOMEN IN ARCHITECTURE FR network, I offer our condolences to her family and loved ones. Please know that Renée remains in our hearts and that all architects would like to be able to say how much she has meant and still means to the profession,
with my sincere condolences
Catherine GUYOT