Guillermo Jullian de la Fuente

Who was Guillermo Jullian de la Fuente?

Guillermo Jullian de la Fuente was a Chilean architect and painter. After finishing his studies of architecture at the Catholic University of Valparaiso, Jullian left his country for Europe, with the declared desire to work with Le Corbusier. Together with his wife, he visited the Swiss architect's works throughout Europe, before settling in Paris in 1958. There, he wrote a letter to Le Corbusier where he told him about Valparaíso and he declared his admiration for his work, asking him for work at his atelier. After a short exchange of letters, Jullian started working at the rue de Sèvres atelier in 1959, where he would stay until his master's death in 1965. After Le Corbusier fired all his previous collaborators, Jullian was his only employee for six months, until others started to arrive there. As chef de bureau at the atelier, Jullian collaborated in such landmark projects as Harvard University’s Carpenter Center, the Knowledge Museum at Chandigargh, the Olivetti Laboratories, the Baghdad Stadium, the French embassy in Brasilia, and the Venice Hospital. The latter project played an important role in the Team 10 discourse and is one of the clearest examples of mat-building typology and of the structuralist thinking in architecture. In some of these works, like the Olivetti Laboratories, the Carpenter Center and the Venice Hospital, Jullian's participation was more relevant than that of a simple collaborator, and has been identified as a co-author.