Laurent Fabius, Minister of Foreign Affairs and International Development, and Fleur Pellerin, Minister of Culture and Communication, selected the project "News from the Front, New Wealth?" , led by the Obras-Frédéric Bonnet/Collectif AJAP14 team, for the French Pavilion of the Venice International Biennial of Architecture in 2016.

 

This decision is part of the new process put in place this year by the two departments to renew the method of selection and expand the spectrum of applications. It is based on the opinion of a selection committee*, chaired by architect and urban planner Dominique Perrault, which examined all the responses to the call for projects launched by the French Institute, operator of the French Pavilion in Venice, in agreement with the two Ministries in July 2015. The purpose of this call was to select an architect or a multidisciplinary team, including a senior architect and a young architect under the age of 40.

 

26 projects were proposed to contribute to the themeReporting from the Front"("News from the Front") chosen by the Chilean architect Alejandro Aravena, commissioner general of this 15th Biennale. The jury unanimously selected the project "News from the Front, New Riches?" carried by the Obras-Frédéric Bonnet/Collectif AJAP14 team.

 

All the members of the jury welcomed the team’s mobilization, which is fully in line with the theme of the Commissioner General’s project: In ordinary France, there are projects that transform a common good into a territory. In the face of the adversity of banality, a widely shared inherited commitment brings out daily, modestly, remarkable in the familiar.”

 

Based on a significant network of real experiences throughout the national territory, the scenographic device designed gives a large place to different forms of expression, integrating tactile and sensory dimensions.

 

The jury also salutes the association within this team, winner of an architect Grand Prix de l'urbanisme (2014) and the collective of AJAP (Album des Jeunes Architectes et Paysagistes, laureates 2014), as well as the place given to higher education.

 

In the current international context, this project restores «the eminently political dimension of architecture».

 

 

In addition, the jury was extremely sensitive to the project "Elsewhere starts here" of the PERU team and its president Gilles Clément, which opens the perspectives of a platform for exchanges on topics of international news.

 

Thus, the jury wanted this team’s perspective to be integrated into the National Pavilion by the winning team, in a spirit of complementarity with its own project.

Finally, the jury underlined the experimental dimension of the two projects: both in the laboratory of daily life developed by the Obras-Frédéric Bonnet/Collectif AJAP14 team and in the actions carried out by the collective PERU on the recurrent appearance of exclusion territories.

 

 

 

*Members of the Selection Committee

 

Chairman of the committee

  • Dominique Perrault, architect and urban planner. A committed actor in contemporary architecture, professor at the Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, lecturer in France and abroad, he has been a member of the Scientific Council of the Atelier International du Grand Paris since 2012. He won the Grand Prix national d'architecture in 1993, the Prix d'architecture européenne Mies van der Rohe in 1997 and the Prix Praemium Imperial in 2015.

 

Expert members of the commission:

  • Pierre Chabard, architect, graduated in 1998 from the Paris-Belleville School of Architecture. He teaches at the École nationale supérieure d'architecture in Paris La-Villette and at the École spéciale d'architecture. He is co-founder of the magazine Criticat (2007).
  • Tania Concko, architect and urban planner, graduate of the École nationale supérieure d'architecture de Versailles, founded its own architecture and urban planning agency in Amsterdam in 1997, after having worked with Bernard Huet and Jean Nouvel.
  • Kaye Geipel, architecture critic, architect and urban planner and deputy editor of the Bauwelt and Stadtbauwelt journals since 2010.
  • Virginie Picon-Lefebvre, architect DPLG-urbaniste ENPC - doctor of history, qualified to direct the researches - professor in history and architectural culture (HCA) at the Ecole nationale supérieure d'architecture de Paris-Belleville.

 

Institutional members of the committee:

  • Vincent Berjot, Director General of Heritage, Ministry of Culture and Communication
  • Salina Grenet-Catalano, Head of Mission for Cultural Exchanges and External Audiovisual, Department of Foreign Affairs and International Development
  • Anne Tallineau, Deputy Director General of the Institut français
  • Agnes Vince, Director of Architecture, Deputy Director General of Heritage, Ministry of Culture and Communication