François Barré

Director of Architecture and Heritage

ArchiLab 1999 shed light on the range and complexity of the way a whole new generation of French and foreign architects are thinking about things, by displaying their experimental projects, completed or otherwise. New tools, new skills, new strategies, and a new definition of the architect's role and position, and the nature of his collaborative work, all make up the hallmark of a profession that is undergoing a sea change. That event, last year, helped us to gauge how the great diversity of approaches is part and parcel of one and the same brand of pragmatism, and one and the same shared concern for dealing with the real–be it with a desire to infiltrate, manipulate, or prompt a critique of reality. We must salute the commitment of the City of Orléans, which is once again organizing the conference, this year focusing on the on-going debate about city-planning issues. How is the city to be conceived anew ? How are we to deal with the issue of the development of urban societies, the changes in and acceleration of urban growth, and the development of new communications networks ? What is the place of architects in relation to the phenomenon of globalization ? The Architecture and Heritage Office has a vested interest in these issues, which will be broached not only through the exhibition but also in the course of the great public debate being held by ArchiLab and UrbaLab 2000. The pooling of thought and praxis, and the plural variety of the answers offered by architects with very different sensibilities, will certainly help to advance our thinking about the city, which lies at the core of our concerns. Our thanks must go to Marie-Ange Brayer, director of the FRAC Centre Regional Contemporary Art Collection, and to Frédéric Migayrou, Visual Arts Adviser in the Regional Cultural Affairs Office [DRAC], who have jointly curated this event, for the expertise and enthusiasm they have devoted, this year as last, to the task of compiling and bringing together all these new ideas, and making it possible for them to be thrashed out in an international discussion centered around the various issues raised and problems posed. It is to be hoped that all this hard work, which is very much part of the DAPA's dissemination policy, will go from strength to strength on a regular basis at the FRAC Centre, whose year-round activities are already sterling proof of a continual interest in the most innovative research to do with architecture and city-planning, both through its collection and through the events which it puts on.