Since 1999, Archilab has become something of a landmark rendez-vous for forward-looking architecture--and architects--at an international level. In just four years, the work of close on 140 different teams of architects will have been exhibited ; and more than 300 architects and critics will have come to Orléans to take part in a whole raft of meetings and events. As from 2002, these meetings between architects will include an additional new rendez-vous, featuring architectural criticism. The first such symposium will be organized by inviting some twenty international critics to attend, and one of its outcomes will be an accompanying publication.

Archilab is keen to help encourage and develop emerging phenomena in the field of architectural creation and reflection, as it is to offer a platform for illustrating stances and positions, lend its backing to forward-looking attitudes, and assert its own position, which is at once critical and practical.

Archilab 1999 raised the question of the architect's changing profession, by way of inviting 30 architectural teams who duly turned up and laid out their approaches and methods. Through the Urbalab symposium, Archilab 2000 questioned new urban phenomena on a worldwide scale ; and thirty new teams came and exhibited their projects. The major concern of Archilab 2001 was the dimension of the dwelling and habitat, as well as new ways of inhabiting and living in them, somewhere between individualization and phenomena of standardization. In 2001, more than 90 teams of architects travelled to Orléans to present their projects and take part in the round tables.

Archilab 2002 is going to focus on the various issues raised by the "environment", understood in all its different dimensions: natural and urban, digital and informational, cultural and political. All the architects attending raise the issue of the temporal dynamic of architecture, and architecture's adaptability to new movements and flows: human, urban, technological. Some thirty international teams will illustrate their methods and approaches, using several projects to do so. The exhibition will include not only specific projects, but intervention strategies, too. It will describe systems of logic for producing architecture, between localization and contextualization.

A scientific selection committee, made up of internationally acclaimed architectural critics, and working with the curators, has come up with a selection which re-asserts Archilab's determinedly open-minded spirit, encompassing a diverse range of positions and lines of thought: Anand Bhatt (India), Manuel Gausa (Spain), Bart Lootsma (Netherlands), Yves Nacher (France) and Frédéric Migayrou (France).
For this 4th conference, Archilab will be organizing the following events:

"Earth Economics"
An exhibition of 30 architects, with each team presenting several projects.

Three days of round tables:
--- Day one: round tables involving the invited architects, focusing on the various issues and questions developed in the exhibition.
--- Day two: 1st International Symposium of Architectural Criticism
--- Day three: meetings bringing together architects, critics, and outside participants.