Joseph Dirand has been sharpening his eye since childhood, he knows how to see, a rare quality indeed. He sees the space and perspective of a place. His sense for composition comes from his creative family background, he has a scenographer’s eye and frames volume with extreme precision. He is sensitive to the way light plays on relief and flat surfaces, he analyses structure, notices the tiniest of details, observes a material’s abundance of features and appreciates the rightness of a color.
Dirand is sensitive and visionary, he took life by the horns the minute he graduated from the Paris-Belleville architecture school. His first commission, a house in India, became his graduate project. He opened his own firm straight away, motivated by the ambition to express himself and the need to get started, “creation was a need”.
He evokes his masters: Le Corbusier’s for his commitment, John Pawson for his minimalism, Peter Zumthor for his timelessness and modesty, Carlo Scarpa for his precision, Eero Saarinen for his global vision. “I love minimalist architecture, the precise, clear vocabulary and the detail”. He plans his projects as both environmental and architectural endeavors.
Within the firm, he draws the plans himself, working ceaselessly on each project down to the last detail in tandem with his colleagues.
Each job, regardless of size, takes shape after a long gestation period, bolstered by research into texture, composition, color, ambience, context and history. He objectivizes this impressionist reflex through bold choices and strong directions.
