After Rudy Ricciotti, Patrick Bouchain, Lacaton and Vassal, Luca Merlini and Lefèvre and Aubert, the villa Noailles pursues its exploration of universe of committed architects. From February 14th till March 28th, 2010, will be presented the projects and the realizations of two teams of architects: the TYIN association created by two young Norwegian architects, Andréas Grontveld Gjertsen and Yashar Hanstad, and those of German architect Anna Heringer. "Build somewhere else", explains curator Florence Sarano, "because this exhibition shows projects conceived by people here, in Europe, for people over there, in Africa or in Asia. Over there, where the term shelter takes back its first sense: in Africa and in Asia, with the students Norwegian architects of TYIN, who created a humanitarian organization to build houses of orphan teenagers, libraries of village and public baths, with the local population and within environmental protection conditions. In Africa and in Bengladesh, with a young German architect, who has reinterpreted the ancients constructiv systems".

Conceived as the photo report of these "architectural adventures", the exhibition presents numerous images of everyday life of the projects: since the stage of the construction where teams of architects and the inhabitants are combined around the implementation of the work which they imagined until the moment of the appropriation by the occupants. These testimonies in three step are different invitations to share the architects’ commitment. The moments arrested on photos taken during the construction site demonstrate the importance to built together and share knowledges: the meeting with the soldier his rifle in the shoulder, the children who find a soothing situation by participating, the precise gesture of the villagers braiding bamboo, the hands of the women making walls in earth and later on, young pupils coiled in the thickness of the same wall.

But there is also the students’ energy, and the minimal conditions of transport and shelter within they realize these projects. Once the realization ended, it takes its place in these wild landscapes playing, for example, with the forest like the echo of building materials with those of the site, as in the North of the Thailand. Photos show these agreements between the natural environment (the color of the sky, the humidity of the air, the material of the earth, outstrips it with the ground for the evacuation of the water of monsoons, the shadows of the sun) and the building.

The time of the appropriation of the henceforth ended constructions is seized by the photography as a play which becomes established very fast between the occupants and their new space. The practices get organized around the custom of the shelter against the sun or the rain, offered by the architects who also wished to keep the contact with the outside protected by the the wooden walls made with fences or with the space underneath roofs. Other sets take place at the time of reading in the wall in African earth or suspended in the Thai bamboo.

Pictures from above:
1, 2: TYIN, library, community hall "Safe Haven". Photo © Pasi Aalto
3, 4: TYIN, orphelinat "Soe Ker Tie". Photo © Pasi Aalto
5: Anna Heringer, "HOMEmade Family Houses". Photo © Kurt Hoerbst
6: Anna Heringer, "Living Tebogo", house for handicapped children. Photo © Sabine Gretner
7: Anna Heringer, "Handmade School". Photo © Kurt Hoerbst
8: Anna Heringer, training center for electricians. Photo © Kurt Hoerbst