My friend Colin Fournier, who has died aged 79, was an architect and planner. His two best known projects were Bernard Tschumi’s vast Parc de la Villette in Paris, which he helped to implement (1984-87), and the Kunsthaus building in Graz, Austria (2003-04), co-designed with Sir Peter Cook.
La Villette, one of François Mitterrand’s grands projets, captured a unique tension between grid-like geometry and naturalistic landscaping that concurred with Colin’s way of applying systems theory to planning. The Kunsthaus – which became known as the “friendly alien” – was built to house a contemporary art museum as part of Graz’s status as European cultural capital of the year, and has become the principal architectural landmark of the city.
