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Tribute Lecture to Jan Vrana

On November 9th, Jean-Marc Weil will honor us with a lecture at L’Université de Montréal, held in tribute to mentor and friend Jan Vrana who passed away this last September.

The lecture will outline the transdisciplinary processes that guided the practice of Jan Vrana (structural engineer) and Jean-Marc Weil (engineer and architect) who collaborated with Daniel Pearl and Simon Jones at L’OEUF. The guest speaker will underline the necessity of cultures transverse between architecture and engineering.

These last decades, we have seen more and more collaborative and iterative creative processes ben born. The hybridization of architecture and engineering, in particular but not only, has given rise to new constructive systems that disrupt our conception of design processes and our professional practice.

Jan Vrana, engineer, professor, activist, was also a mentor to one of our mentors.

Respected for his passion, diligence, intelligence and intuitiveness, he definitely embodied the spirit that drives our team and the type of personality for which we have great respect. In the words of his son: “He could debate anyone – anyone who tried to, that is – in politics, history, the environment and economics. He had a great sense of humor, inserting jokes at every opportunity, and repeating it whenever it got a laugh, which it often did. Over the years dad formed great and lasting friendships with relatives, colleagues and individuals, that he highly cherished. He will always be remembered for being adventurous, brilliant, practical, humble, a bit rebellious and for living his life to the fullest.”

The perseverance of our work to achieve our ideals of inclusion and resilience would be impossible without the presence of people like Jan, who give us the strength to stand up to the status quo. We mourn the loss of this fine spirit and extend our condolences to the family.

Jan worked with L’OEUF on La Bergerie, of which here are some images.