Ambassador, dear Christian Masset,
Dear Agnès Vince, Director of Architecture, Deputy Director General of Heritage,
Dear Pierre Buhler, President of the French Institute,
Ladies and gentlemen representatives of cities and metropolises,
Dear Commissioners Nicola Delon, Julien Choppin and Sébastien Eymard,
Ladies and gentlemen patrons and partners,
Ladies and gentlemen architects,
Ladies and gentlemen,
Dear everyone,
I am particularly pleased to be with you today in Venice, on behalf of the Minister of Culture, for this biennial, which is a major moment in the international and French architecture scene.
The Minister is currently with our President in Russia, where she wishes to be the spokeswoman of creative freedom, and defend the values and principles that are the foundation of our Republic. As she did when she went up the steps in Cannes with the producers of Serebrennikov as said with Romeo Castellucci during their magnificent meeting.
The two commissioners general of this Venice Architecture Biennale, Yvonne Farell and Shelley McNamara, have placed this edition under the seal of humanity, of freedom. Their desire resonates deeply with the principles at the heart of the Minister of Culture’s commitment.
And the French pavilion, which we are inaugurating today, dear Nicola Delon, Julien Choppin and Sebastien Eymard, is emblematic of the will of the Minister of Culture in terms of architecture:
- To favour an architecture that promotes well-being;
- An architecture that meets the needs of an increasingly urban society;
- An architecture that promotes cultural, social and generational exchanges;
- Architecture for all territories, from the most urban to the most rural, major sites of urban change in the heart of our ancient cities;
- An architecture that provides answers to major environmental issues;
- An architecture for all.
But it is also the will to rely on the professionals of architecture.
The French Pavilion demonstrates that being an architect today is not just about building a building. It can be, and is increasingly, developing methods of exercise to adapt to the needs and expectations of society. Making the project with users, connecting, working with the provisional, thinking sober, reversible or scalable, is all that the French Pavilion expresses.
In the words of Irish architects Yvonne Farell and Shelley McNamara, “Freespace represents generosity of spirit and a sense of humanity at the heart of the architecture’s intentions, with an emphasis on the quality of the space itself.”
Architecture today knows how to serve a society imposing a reconstruction of the city on the city leaving room for places welcoming the unexpected and functioning as real social laboratories.
In the xxie our cultural space is global, global. Most citizens are mobile. People are moving and cultures are mingling. This is an inclusive city that the Minister of Culture is defending.
A city where social relations are woven, intersect and develop, a mesh city, dense, mixed.
The «Infinite Places» proposed for the French Pavilion, by Nicolas Delon, Julien Choppin and Sebastien Eymard, the architects of the «Encore Heureux» team, invite us to review our ways of thinking, to experiment with new commonalities and to make better use of the generosity of architecture in its capacity to accommodate the unexpected.
We need the flexibility and generosity of architecture to accomplish the major transitions that are underway.
A more urban society is also a society that must preserve its environment and its natural resources.
To reuse what is already planned, sometimes temporarily, to reinvest places, to restore them a use, is to go towards a more dense but welcoming and generous city.
Within 25 years, the challenge for our cities will be to welcome 6.3 billion people worldwide.
Of course, in this context, architecture develops more dense, better used and more compact eco-responsible forms.
But beyond its technical challenges, it reinvents the uses of existing sites and buildings and adapts them to a new environmental, technical and societal context. It is the strength of the ten places that are present, revealed through the dream that they have made possible to accomplish, in their difference, their sustainability or their precariousness. They express an expectation of place, of diversity, where everything is invented between citizens, every day. They also express the challenge of public authorities to be able to provide answers adapted to the infinite diversity of our society.
I want to quote them all to pay tribute to their inventors:
- The Pasteur Hotel in Rennes
- The Centquatre in Paris
- Postal sorting in Avignon
- The Great Neighbours, in Paris
- 6B in Saint-Denis
- The Convention in Auch
- La Friche Belle de Mai, Marseille
- The Medici Workshops, in Clichy-Montfermeil
- La Ferme du Bonheur in Nanterre
- La Grande Halle, in Colombelles
As part of this reconstruction of the city on the city, the conversion of certain sites is not easy, economically and technically constrained. It is not uncommon for these places to lie dormant, sometimes for a long time.
This “here and now” vacancy offers undeniable potential for citizens looking for alternative models. It is also a time when they can reclaim a place, reinvest it, reinvent it. In the words of Encore Heureux, it is a time of “openness to the unexpected in order to build forever the possible future”.
To work in this context of change, the architect is an essential actor, but whose action is not reduced to the act of building. What this shows is that the architect is as interested in questions as answers, and therefore in societal expectations, as in architectural forms. That questions constitute the first material of a project, that the architect must knead, work until a form can emerge.
Today, producing housing for all is a major axis of government policy and it puts at the heart of the debate the ability of architecture to respond to it.
Architects, for a very long time, have been the engines of innovation in the way of designing housing adapted to the lifestyles of their time.
Today, the challenge of housing is still before us and we must know how to respond to it in a context of energy and digital transition without ignoring the economic dimension that makes any project possible.
Faced with this challenge, it is essential to reaffirm the battles that the Minister of Culture is waging for architecture and architects.
It’s a triple fight.
A fight for the recognition of the contribution and value of architecture by all citizens.
Because the role of architects is not always well understood in France, and our country needs its professionals to meet the great challenges of our century. We must therefore reaffirm the place of architecture in our society and in the evolution of our environment.
The second battle is that of experimentation, that of the «Licence to do».
We must guarantee the conditions that allow you to create, to experiment, to imagine with all the actors of the living environment, the spaces of each one for tomorrow. For that you need time, you need means.
The economic structuring of your professional structures is a central issue, on which we work together.
This is the meaning of the «licence to make», which the Minister carries with great conviction, and which she wishes to lead until generalization.
And finally, the third battle is that of radiation from formations and research in architecture,
Because it’s the key to the future.
We are in the process of strengthening the initial training of architects on the challenges of existing buildings in particular, because we need you for the ecological transition, the fight against urban sprawl, the revitalization of our centres-the reuse and adaptation of the recent architectural heritage of the 20e century… and soon the 21ste—so sensitive, because it hasn’t been looked at.
Starting in the 2018-2019 academic year, our schools will mobilize to offer more teaching on heritage to students; And the Minister also wants them to develop their research activities, around housing and housing. That is part of their mission.
This triple battle – for recognition, innovation, training – will help consolidate the national architecture strategy.
The Minister is helping to inform the housing debate by launching two major offensive missions for your profession:
- A reflection on how to strengthen “the desire for architecture” in our country, on the one hand;
- And a work on the contribution of architects to the quality of the housing, on the other hand, on how to improve the legibility of the role of the architect in the production process of quality housing – from the design to the realization; and on the other hand, on the essential balance of the relationship between contracting authority and contracting authority.
Today, we celebrate the influence of French architecture and French architects.
The French Pavilion of this 16e edition of the Venice Architecture Biennale is a human and creative building block of all the successive French pavilions of this Biennale. May all their Commissioners be greeted here.
On behalf of the Minister, I would like to thank and warmly congratulate the entire Encore heureux team for its talent, its magnificent work, its commitment to the influence of our architects.
Finally, I welcome the fruitful collaboration with the French Institute and the generous support of many patrons and partners, which I will not mention again, who have made the success of the French Pavilion, the commitment of the local authorities present. The Minister implements a very determined policy in the territories, based on the close link between the State and the local authorities to which she is very attached.
I wish you all a Venice of discovery and debate.
Thank you.