François Bordry

Chairman of the FRAC Centre

In 1999, Archilab, the 1st Orléans International Architectural Conference–an exhibition bringing together thirty young architects and several days of round tables–attracted a broad public. This year, at the second conference, we have a chance to discover thirty new teams of French and foreign architects. Many of them are already represented in the FRAC Centre collection, based in Orléans and focused since 1991 on research architecture. Architects such as Asymptote, Decq & Cornette, Neil Denari and Michele Saee were in at the start of this collection. ArchiLab is thus conducting a dialogue that is attuned to the concerns of the FRAC Centre–broadcasting architectural work in its avant-garde dimensions, and making it accessible to as broad a public as possible, amateur and professional alike. The goals shared by the FRAC Centre and ArchiLab are to promote and support research, and turn a collection into a laboratory of ideas for tomorrow's architecture. By way of the FRAC Centre collection, the work of these architects is on view both in France and abroad–in 1999 in Peking and Budapest, and in 2000 in Siena and Rome, not forgetting the dissemination of this collection throughout the Centre Region, and at national level too. The vitality of a collection like the FRAC Centre one resides in the fact that it is constantly involved in the exploratory dimension of present-day architecture, always imparting its valuable knowledge by way of exhibitions and publications, and blazing a trail to major events like ArchiLab, which has now taken on the tremendous challenge of bringing together sixty of the most forward-looking architects, at international level, and assembling them in Orléans so that the public may discover their projects, which are reconfiguring the space of our cities of tomorrow.