The motorway as an obsessive subject, capable of illuminating the unconscious of an architectural practice. That might be a succinct description of this book, which brings together texts previously unpublished or already published by Studio Muoto on the theme of the motorway. This eclectic collection of texts—extracts from articles or lectures, notes, project descriptions—is complemented by a veritable photographic scrapbook produced by the architects of the office which, in 2023, curate the French pavilion at the Venice Architecture Biennale. These images, taken during their travels and their many projects, illustrate their obsessions as much as the wanderings of their thoughts. In this way, Holy Highway reflects the principle of the exploratory journey as the foundation of an architectural sensibility.
Studio Muoto is an architectural practice based in Paris, founded in 2003 by Gilles Delalex and Yves Moreau. Its activities cover the fields of architecture, urban planning, research and teaching. Muoto’s projects are characterised by structures that combine a multitude of activities and respond to economic and aesthetic challenges. They advocate minimum architecture that can evolve over time. Muoto means form in Finnish. Gilles Delalex, a French architect, studied in Grenoble and at McGill University Montreal, and is currently a professor at the École d’architecture de Paris-Malaquais, where he heads the Theory, History and Project department. A Belgian-Dutch architect, Yves Moreau studied at the École des Arts de Saint Luc in Brussels and at the Chalmers Teknista Högskala in Göteborg.