Speech by Audrey Azoulay, Minister of Culture and Communication, on the occasion of the announcement of the winners of the 2016 Young Architects and Landscape Albums

Dear friends,

Today we gather for the proclamation of the Albums of young architects and landscapers [Ajap], held in biennial. This competition distinguishes and honours young professionals in architecture and landscape.

Since 2012, architecture has been one of our priorities. The architect has a vocation to make the world inhabit. To support architecture, to promote the quality of construction, is to give meaning to our environment, to say how we want to live and also what we refuse. It is the built framework, but also the symbolic framework that reflects the social project we carry. A child does not grow in the same way depending on whether his room offers his wandering gaze a window within his reach; depending on whether the vegetal universe has slipped between the pavements, depending on whether he can share with others collective spaces. Architecture structures our imagination and our social model.

Last week, as you know, I was in the National Assembly for the second reading of the freedom of creation, architecture and heritage.

This is why this new law forcefully asserts that architecture must be placed at the heart of the construction of everyday life.

Until then, architecture was often considered to be superfecal.

On the contrary, this law defends the idea that we must develop the presence of architecture for everyone, for the everyday living environment, beyond the only exceptional major architectural projects - which are obviously also necessary.

This is the first time since the great law on architecture of 1977 that so much is done in this field.

A series of measures have been planned:

• The architect’s intervention threshold was set at 150 m²;
• A possibility of experimentation has been created (the “licence to do”), that is, the possibility, if necessary, of deviating from certain standards in order to test new methods;
• For the filing of the development permit, the intervention of the architect and other design trades is necessary for the development of the “architectural, landscape and environmental project”;
• The importance of the competition and the accompanying debates is reaffirmed;
• Incentives to use the architect are provided when it is not mandatory;
• and a few others…

I am committed to this ambition: Defend architecture as a long-term investment for beauty and sustainability. Respond to the major issues of city policy, the necessary ecological transition or the increase in the number of housing units. Mobilizing landscapers, will allow the inhabitants to appropriate the public space, the collective gardens.

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I know the joys but also the difficulties of these professions – the competitions, the orders, and even the wagons!

I also know your enthusiasm, your pugnacity and your determination.

In this regard, I would like to commend the very dynamic initiative of the AJAP Promotion 2014, which for the first time formed a collective.

You have responded together to calls for tenders, competitions.

Your involvement in the National Architecture Strategy working groups makes you a true partner of the Ministry of Culture and Communication. I really appreciate that.

Finally, the collective of young architects and landscapers that you are has won, with the architect and urban planner Frédéric Bonnet, the consultation for the commissariat of the French pavilion of the Biennale of Architecture of Venice in May. I look forward to finding out soon.

And I congratulate you.

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Today we will celebrate the winners of the 2016 class of the contest.

I would like to thank the jury made up of talented professionals, co-chaired this year by Marc Barani, Grand Prix national de l'architecture 2013, and Laure Planchais, Grand Prix national du paysage 2012.

This jury, believing that AJAP should be an experimental laboratory of new ideas and practices, valued singular and poetic achievements. It is the experimental approach and innovation that have been rewarded.

The jury selected 20 winners, including 15 teams of young architects and 5 teams of young landscape designers.

Dear Recipients,

I don’t know you yet. But you are the architects and landscapers of tomorrow.

I have no doubt that your generation is more than any other aware of the challenges of your time: reconversion of existing buildings, density and control of urbanization, recomposition of territories, climate challenge, uses of sharing.

You mix practice and research, you also teach; you are familiar with participatory approaches.

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You will be accompanied for two years, through publications, an exhibition, which will circulate around the world. And more opportunities to value your work and make yourself known.

I want to thank all the members of the Circle of Partners who make this operation possible, and of course the Directorate-General for Heritage in the department that runs it.

I express the wish to continue with your promotion the enthusiastic work carried out with your predecessors.

Before I call you, I’ll turn it over to the two jury co-chairs.

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The winners of the 2016 AJAP class are:

For landscapers:

–Rozenn DULEY from A-MAR

–Aurélien ALBERT and Mélanie GASTÉ from GAMA workshop

–Stanislas BAH-CHUZEVILLE, Richard MARIOTTE, Arnaud MERMET-GERLAT and

Michaël de JOUSSINEAU de TOURDONNET from the agency LES JARDINIERS NOMADES

–Lætitia LASANTÉ from OMNIBUS

–Mathieu GONTIER and Estelle OLLIVIER from WAGON LANDSCAPING

For architects:

–Yann CACLIN from ABC STUDIO

–Aymeric ANTOINE and Pierre DUFOUR from ANTOINE-DUFOUR ARCHITECTES

–Amélie FONTAINE de l’ATELIER AMÉLIE FONTAINE

–Benjamin VAN DEN BULCKE from ATELIER ARCHITECTURE, TERRITOIRES, PAYSAGE (ATP)

–Félix MULLE from OURCQ WORKSHOP

–Frédéric EINAUDI, Maxime GIL and Anthony RODRIGUES from ATELIER EGR

–Isabelle BUZZO and Jean-Philippe SPINELLI from BUZZO-SPINELLI ARCHITECTURE

–Nicolas DORVAL-BORY from NICOLAS DORVAL-BORY ARCHITECTES

–Benjamin LAFORE and Sébastien MARTINEZ-BARAT from MARTINEZ BARAT-LAFORE ARCHITECTES

–Anne-Julie MARTINON from MAAJ ARCHITECTES

–Quentin BELIN, Pierre HEULHARD de MONTIGNY and Marie-Hélène PINOCHE from MUTATIONS ARCHITECTES

–Stéphanie DURNIAK, Marie FADE, Baptiste FRANCESCHI and Caroline MANGIN from OH! SOM ARCHITECTES

–Gaspard PINTA

–Guillaume RAMILLIEN of GUILLAUME RAMILLIEN ARCHITECTURE

–Sonia LECLERCQ and Jean-Aimé SHU from SOJA ARCHITECTURE