Jean-Pierre Chupin

Jean-Pierre Chupin is professor at the University of Montreal School of Architecture, where is holds the Chaire de recherche sur les concours et les pratiques contemporaines en architecture (www.crc.umontreal.ca ) and co-directs of the Laboratoire d’étude de l’architecture potentielle (www.leap-architecture.org).

Trained as an architect in Europe (France and Great Brittain), he has been registered in Québec (Canada) since 1993 and was selected to represent young architecture in Canada, along with 9 other teams, at the Venice Biennal of 1995 (held in 1996). Jean-Pierre is an architecture graduate from both Nantes School of Architecture (France) and Portsmouth Polytechic School of Architecture (UK). He holds a Masters in History and Theory of Architecture from McGill University (1990) and a PhD in Environmental Design from University of Montreal (1998). He has taught at Université du Québec in Montreal (Uqam), at École Nationale Supérieure d’architecture in Toulouse and at École Nationale Supérieure d’architecture in Lyon before joining the University of Montreal School of Architecture in 2001.

At Université de Montréal, he is responsible for theory courses, graduate seminars and studios, and doctoral studies.  The work of his MArch students (Explorations in architectural design) has been regularly exhibited and is presented on the site OUPROPO (OUvroir de PROjets POtentiels) (www.oupropo.umontreal.ca).

Chupin started is academic career as scientific translator of Alberto Perez-Gomez’s seminal Architecture and the Crisis of Modern Science (The MIT Press, 1983) published in French in 1988. Architectural theoretician, he has been working for more than two decades on the role of analogical thinking in architecture from various vantage points (historical, theoretical, pedagogical and cognitive). He has conducted close examination on the role of analogy in writings by Philibert de l’Orme, Le Corbusier and Aldo Rossi. In 2003-2004 he was researcher in residence at the Canadian Center for Architecture Study Center and worked on the Città Analoga by architect Aldo Rossi. The first volume of his research on the Analogie et théorie en architecture (De la vie, de la ville et de la conception, même) was first published by Swiss Infolio, in the series « Projet et Théorie », in 2010 and was republished in 2013 in a revised and augmented edition.

Jean-Pierre Chupin conducts collaborative research on architectural theory, design thinking, analogical imagination, and has become a renowned expert on architectural and urban design competitions. Both at L.E.A.P since 2002, and at the Research Chair on Competitions and Contemporary Practices in Architecture since 2012, he has developed a particular approach to scientific leadership through an understanding of the specificities of research and theoretical discourse in architecture. The L.E.A.P lab gathers 9 scholars from 3 universities (Université de Montréal, Concordia University and Université du Québec à Montréal) and the research axis revolves around issues as diverse as: architectural theory, the history of Canadian architecture, innovation in heritage contexts, social housing, design for sustainability and its challenges, but also semiotics and generally speaking research on competitions. At L.E.A.P lab, and since 2003, he has been coordinating the design and update of the projects databse of competitions organised in Canada since 1942 (www.ccc.umontreal.ca). He directed the production of another database for the EUROPAN organization, the biggest organiser of competitions in Europe (www.arclab.umontreal.ca/EUROPAN-EN). Now considered a major scientific and cultural resource, the CCC received specific funding in 2012 from Innovation Canada as a major Canadian resource in the fields of architecture, urbanism and landscape architecture. The Assemblée universitaire de l’Université de Montréal appointed him for two mandates between 2006 and 2012 as a member of the Comité de la Recherche de l’Université de Montréal.

Jean-Pierre Chupin has published 7 books, conceived two majors databases of projects, published more than 100 papers, presented 5 governmental reports and has already given more than 100 lectures, mostly as guest or keynote speaker in various international contexts in Europe, North-American but also South-American and Asian universities.

Jean-Pierre Chupin has organized major international conferences. He was the initiator of the first symposium of the Grands Ateliers de l’Isle d’Abeau (France, 2001) on constructive thinking and tectonics, based on the work of Professor Kenneth Frampton (Columbia University). Since then, he has organized interdisciplinary conferences on cultural mediations and knowledge transfers in the field of project theories and practices, on the relationships between architecture, imagination and philosophy, on architectural judgement and on the role of international competitions on architectural quality in the planetary age. As director of the new Research Chair on competitions, he organised, in 2012, the first conference on the role of competitions in the production of culture, quality and Knowledge (International Competitions and Architectural Quality in the Planetary Age» – Université de Montréal). In 2013, he launched the first edition of IDEA@UofM (International Doctoral Encounters in Architecture at Université de Montréal), selecting PhD Students from the best doctoral programs in both Americas and in Europe to reflect on the complex theme of ornament, algorithms and analogies (between cognitive and technological operations in architecture).

Jean-Pierre Chupin received one of 3 Awards for Excellence in Teaching granted by Université de Montréal in 2008 (category: Associate professors).

Jean-Pierre Chupin is the scientific director and principal editor of the Canadian Competitions Catalogue a documentary database and  research engine, intended for archival, analysis and the history of contemporary architecture in Canada.  Bilingual, this research tool and its diffusion constitutes for historians and researchers, for students, for elected and administrative public, the experts and professional consultants, whether they are architects, engineers, members of the jury, promoters, or the general public, an important source of documentation. Since its publication on line in spring of 2006, the C.C.C. has recieved over 3000 visits per month.