Odile Decq is a French architect and urban planner. International renown came in 1990 with her first major commission: La Banque Populaire de l'Ouest, in Rennes, France. Since then, she has been faithful to her fighting attitude while diversifying and radicalizing her research. Being awarded The Golden Lion of Architecture during the Venice Biennale in 1996 acknowledged her early and unusual career. Other than just a style, an attitude or a process, Odile Decq's work materializes a complete universe that embraces urban planning, architecture, design, and art. Her multidisciplinary approach was recently recognized with the Jane Drew Prize in 2016, and she was honored with Architizer's Lifetime Achievement Award in 2017 for her pioneering work, but also her engagement and contribution to the debate on architecture. Odile Decq has been teaching architecture for the past 25 years. In France, she was Head of l'École Spéciale d'Architecture (ESA) in Paris from 2007 to 2012. Following this experience, in 2014 she created her own school in Lyon: the Confluence Institute for Innovation and Creative Strategies in Architecture, recently accredited by the Royal Institute of British Architects. In 2018, she received an Honorary Fellowship from the Royal Architectural Institute of Canada in recognition of her outstanding contributions in building science, design and education. In 2018, Odile Decq opened a traveling exhibition about the Studio's work ("Horizons") at the House of Art in Ostrava, Czech Republic, also shown in Prague, and she was invited to create two installations (Phantom's Phantom and Diagonal 0) for the 16th Biennale Architettura 2018 in Venice.
