Olivier Vidal & associates has been operationg around the world since 1969

Our Story

In 1962, when Olivier Vidal started to study architecture at Ecole Nationale des Beaux Arts de Paris (ENSBA), he had the great opportunity to work with the companion of Le Corbusier, Vladimir Bodiansky.  Also he was able to attend classes of a master, Jean Prouvé, at the Arts et Métiers School in Paris. He continued his studies at the renowned Polytechnic Institute of Zurich ETH.  After earning his diploma, he worked on a doctorate with Professor Ronner on sustainable development in 1969.

 In 1969 he created a multidisciplinary group named SOPHA where all design arenas where represented.. During the same period Olivier Vidal was teaching at the ETH Zurich as an assistant for Professor Trbuhovic, and later for professor Schaal. Olivier Vidal started teaching at UCLA in the Design Institute with Dr Nathan Shapira. Since then, Olivier has been teaching as a guest teacher in many different countries.

Beyond his academic career Olivier designed buildings all over the world from Beijing to Rio, Los Angeles Europe and the Persian Gulf. He was associated with Louis Khan and Kenzo Tange for the development of Abbas Abbad in Tehran. Later on he became formally associated with Kenzo Tange. He did several projects with IM Pei like the Carrousel du Louvre in Paris. Furthermore he worked as a partner with other luminaries of the profession.

For the last 15 years he has been the space planner landscape Architect for the reconstruction of Beirut. He has offices in several countries. He spends half of his time in India where he has numerous projects.

Olivier is multilingual, speaking French, English, German and Spanish fluently with some Italian, Farsi, and Japanese. In 1989 he created a traveling fellowship at the UCLA Architecture Department

Olivier’s objective is to elevate the experience of architecture to a new level in which the space establishes a dialogue with its inhabitants, thus succeeding in generating a quality of experience and of living through the design of space. For him Architecture is about people and reaching out to them.

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Our Team is a multidisciplinary team and for the last 30 years, the quest of our practice has been to work WITH people and FOR people. The diversity of projects we undertook always had the end user as the target of our reflections. All sizes of project have been undertaken from urban design to interiors; the underlying thought was always the people who ultimately would bring those structures to life. Shall it be a residential project or a retail project, the main issue was the ability to help the user have a better life. For that matter, the necessity to integrate in a local culture always challenged us and helped us find new answers to age long problems