Art Director, ArchiLab

DepSince it was created in 1999, ArchiLab has established a solid name as an international forum for debate and discussion, and meetings. As such, it has undoubtedly revitalized the critical discourse about architecture in France. This conference-cum-exhibition, which is closely connected to the FRAC Centre architecture collections, has been keenly supported by the City of Orleans. Year after year, ArchiLab has managed to maintain the initial idea of a “festival” of architecture devoted to the work of young architects. With experimentation as its sole focus, ArchiLab has dealt with many different methods and approaches. The most conceptual and radical projects have rubbed shoulders with more pragmatic works and theories. Some architects, either exhibited at the conference for the first time or then little known in France, have since found their footing: this is the case with Shigeru Ban, architect of the future Pompidou Centre to be built in Metz, and Lars Spuybroek (NOX), designer of la maison-folie in Lille. Some architects have meanwhile been hard at work building: R&Sie in France and Asia, for example. “Non-standard Architectures” have also seen the light of day, and some of them have been exhibited at the Pompidou Centre by Frédéric Migayrou, one of the founders of ArchiLab. One such is the “Hydrapier” multimedia centre built at Haarlemmemeer in the Netherlands by Asymptote, another, the entrances to metro stations produced by digitally controlled machines in Japan by Makoto Sei Watanabe. ArchiLab has also at times acted as a springboard, at others merely a place of conviviality and exchanges, intersections and hybridizations. After four conferences devoted to championing a new generation of architects, and one devoted to the FRAC Centre collections, a different curator will from now on be invited for each event, thus introducing a new eye each year. This year, the expertise and culture of Bart Lootsma can be in no doubt, and the same goes for his exhibition plan which will certainly stand apart from the previous ArchiLab meetings. By inviting a critical re-reading of modernism, this plan will lie at the crossroads of practices that are at once architectural, artistic and urban.

----Biographie----

Marie-Ange Brayer
Art Director, ArchiLab

The art historian, art critic and architectural critic Marie-Ange Brayer (born in Belgium in 1964) has been director of the Regional Contemporary Art Collection (FRAC Centre) of France’s Centre Region in Orléans since 1996. The FRAC’s collection is devoted to architecture in its experimental dimension. As co-founder with Frédéric Migayrou of the ArchiLab conferences in Orléans, she herself curated these events with Béatrice Simonot in 2001 and 2002. In this latter year the two curators were also in charge of the French Pavilion at the Venice Biennal. Having presented the FRAC Centre collections as part of ArchiLab 2003, Marie-Ange Brayer will henceforth by responsible for ArchiLab’s artistic management.