ROUND TABLES BETWEEN ARCHITECTS :
May 28th 2002
Conference Center

10:00 am – 11:00 am : Reproduction of the body
modérator : Yves Nacher
How does architecture accompany the body? Is there a defection of architecture in its relationship to the body (population shifts, precarious dwellings, etc.)? Has architecture made due consideration of a new economics of the body, permeated by movements, the networking of technologies, and present-day urban practices? Where are the research projects aimed at creating a merger between body, environment, and technology?
TeamMINUS
Jones, Partners : Architecture
B&K+
nARCHITECTS

11:00 am – 12:00 am: Stock and resources
modérator : Andréas Ruby
How, in this day and age, is our environment to be changed into resources? How are we to incorporate the new media so as to operate on different scales: architectural, urban, household? How is architecture to be adapted to individual scenarios by way of a standardized production ("customization")? Is it possible to recycle the environment (technological, informational, natural, etc.) so as to develop a more interactive architecture? Thoughts about self-generating environments , appropriating the energies of the constructed environment, and recycling them in order to build a new environment.
L W P A C - Lang Wilson Practice in Architecture Culture
Servo
propeller z
Agence Manuelle Gautrand Architectes
Tom Leader Studio

12:00 am – 1:00 pm : Nature engineering
modérator : Pedro Gadhano
What do "digitizing" nature and "naturalizing" architecture mean? What is the scope of these new digital and analog landscapes, built on the basis of informational data and open not only to local developments but also to the transformational processes of society? How are we to make the shift from the technological solutions of an architecture designed to be adapted to climatic circumstances and local resources, to global strategies of intervention?
Eduard Bru arquitectos
cloud 9
T.R. Hamzah & Yeang Sdn. Bhd.
IaN+

2:30 pm – 3:30 pm : The city as ecosystem
modérator: Bart Lootsma
Can the city swap qualities and properties with nature? Can the management of density by way of three-dimensional city planning solve the problem of land conservation? How are we to re-appropriate the city? What are the new urban phenomena? How are we to conceive of city and nature within continually emergent fluid forms of ecology? Is it possible to create our own environment by involving, in one and the same urban production, architecture, city-planning, advertising, farming, geography, and the new media?
Chora
HOST
RAD
offshore architects
Atelier Bow-Wow
Block

4 :00 pm – 5 :00 pm: Availability of territory
modérator : Ole Bouman
Territory may be perceived and understood as a complex living system. From it may be taken parameters that will be recontextualized and recycled in architecture. Nature can be read in terms of relational mechanisms, as a connective landscape rather than as an object. Programmes can be diverted in order to rethink the generative nature of the site in its topographical and structural dimensions. How are we to usher in a dialogue between constructed and natural form by way of an architecture devised as an open and flexible arrangement?
Vincente Guallart - Lian Tsen
Agence Francis Soler
TEZUKA ARCHITECTS
Kengo Kuma & Associates

1ST INTERNATIONAL SYMPOSIUM OF ARCHITECTURAL CRITICISM
Wednesday 29 may 2002
Conference Center

Coordination : Frédéric Migayrou
Moderateurs : Zeynep Mennan, Frédéric Migayrou

10:00 am – 11:30 am
Criticism and the field of theory
Andrew Benjamin - Aaron Betsky - Christian Girard - Zeynep Mennan - Leon Van Schaick

11:30 am – 1:00pm
Use of history
Stefano Boeri - Pierre Chabard - Hans Ibelings - James Wines

2 :30 pm – 4:00 pm
Means and methods of criticism
Ole Bouman - Nuno Grande - Andreas Ruby - Antonino Saggio

4:00 pm – 7 :30 pm
Criticism in action
Manuel Gausa - Alicia Imperiale - Bart Lootsma - Philippe Morel

At the first three Archilab conferences, close on 150 teams of architects had an opportunity to make contact with one another, along with some twenty critics working in the area of the various issues and problems raised. So this year it seemed timely to draw up a report on the critical arena itself, and create an Archilab of criticism--a sort of inventory helping to compare points of view, activities and practices, and the various positions of critical analysis involving creative work and what lies ahead for architecture. To this end, it is the intent of the Symposium of Architectural Criticism to sidestep the traditional forms of conference and round table, and usher in an open, off-the-cuff discussion. What will be encouraged above all is the encounter, calling on one and all to define their stance and their areas of concern. Critical practices used to be grouped in schools and confined to a certain dogmatism, but these days it seems difficult to clearly identify these practices, linked as they are to philosophical schools and federating architectural movements. A certain relativism has come to the fore which is no longer content to remain within the orthodoxies represented by modernism, Bruno Zevi's organicism, Reyner Banham's environmentalism, Manfredo Tafuri's historicism, and the various schools of a brand of postmodernism divided between the influence of the Frankfurt School on the Tendenza in Europe and a line of thinking about typologies in the works of Colin Rowe, Robert Venturi and Kenneth Frampton. At a time when it is easier to define a real topography of post-war criticism, and gain a clearer grasp of individual positions, it is the actual structure of these contrasts, as well as of an historical development of those critical arenas, which seemed to be being challenged. These days, nobody can simply invoke the name of a a school or group any more, and it would indeed seem that deconstruction, and its attempt to apply a unifying discourse to a heterogeneous situation, has sounded the death knell of a pattern of critical conduct invariably tied down to a relationship to the sources of modernism. The critical forum has thus become somewhat dulled, and the only choice left to us, now, is the one between the reports of an event-driven press and a brand of university writing confined within the straitjacket of commentary--otherwise put, between the thesis and the special editorial section. Archilab is thus offering international critics a chance to get together to muse upon the conditions and challenges of present-day criticism. What is the situation regarding a relationship to theory, and to areas of philosophical and aesthetic compliance, associated with disciplines other than architecture? How, in this day and age, are we to articulate a relationship to history--not only a history of architecture, but also an involvement in the socio-historical arena? What are the means and methods of criticism, and what are the media whereby it may be exercised in an open field of communication? But what, too, are its political means and methods, and how effectual is criticism? And last of all, how can criticism be effectual, and how can it represent both powerful proposals for architects, and a political instrument for contracting authorities and decision-making powers-that-be? Over and above inviting exchanges, this first Symposium of Criticism will attempt to formulate a networked system not only encouraging idea-swapping, but also drawing together all the different kinds of energy in order to create new and available writing possibilities, by promoting an openness on the part of the various media to real stances and positions, and authentic discussions.

SYNTHESIS OF THE DEBATS
WITH OUTSIDE PARTICIPANTS OF THE MANIFESTATION
Thursday May 30th 2002
Conference Center

9 : 30 am
Introduction by the Mayor of Orleans

Speeche from Alain RAFESTHAIN, Président de la Région Centre

Speeche from Wanda DIEBOLT, Directrice de l'Architecture et du Patrimoine, Ministère de la Culture et de la Communication

Speeches from Guy AMSELLEM, Délégué aux Arts Plastiques, Ministère de la Culture et de la Communication

Speeche from François BORDRYdu Président du FRAC Centre

ArchiLab presentation by the curators : Marie-Ange BRAYER, Béatrice SIMONOT

Synthesis of the Round Tables : Yves NACHER et Pedro GADANHO

Synthesis of the Symposium : Zeynep MENNAN

11 : 30 am – 1 : 00 pm
Conference James WINES

List of critics invited (in alphabetical order):

-BENJAMIN Andrew (GB)
-BETSKY Aaron (Netherlands)
-BOERI Stefano (Italy)
-BOUMAN Ole (Netherlands)
-CHABARD Pierre (France)
-GAUSA Manuel (Spain)
-GIRARD Christian (France)
-IBELINGS Hans (Netherlands)
-IMPERIALE Alicia (USA)
-LOOTSMA Bart (Netherlands)
-MIGAYROU Frédéric (France)
-MOREL Philippe (France)
-MENNAN Zeynep (Turkey)
-RUBY Andreas (Germany)
-SAGGIO Antonino (Italy)
-VAN SCHAIK Leon (Australia)
-WINES James (USA)