SIMONE GUILLISSEN-HOA

Born in Beijing in 1916, to a Chinese father, an engineer, and a Polish mother, writer; educated in Paris at the age of 12, student in England then in Belgium, graduated in Brussels in 1938, Simone Guillissen-Hoa participated in the architectural adventure of the 20th century. Caroline Mierop tells the story of life outside standards of this woman, Eurasian, activist, resistant, deported, mother single, self-employed. She talks about her friends and her loves, her doubts and its advances, its customers and its achievements. It presents the first monograph of this "great lady of architecture" to whom, until now, no publication has been devoted to it. With a knowledgeable and flexible pen, the author offers both an intense story and a detailed work, bringing together many unpublished testimonies and archival documents, and seven “souvenir portraits” signed Jean-Pierre Hoa.