The Found objects project is a collective exploration of the issues, challenges, ideas and forms of re-use in architecture. Situated at the heart of the Cité de l’Architecture et du Patrimoine, the Architectural Creation Platform is an experimental format that has adopted the critical approach: ‘what questions, what creates debate’. It’s a place of installations and discussions which supplements the Cité’s exhibitions. It is positioned as part of a rationale of openness: cross-generational, cross-European and cross-disciplinary.

The agency Barrault Pressacco, resident of the Architectural Creation Platform at the Cité de l’Architecture et du Patrimoine for the 2022-2023 season invites emerging architects to transform a found object to give it a brand-new form and life. Each participant is invited to ‘find’ an object to imagine its metamorphosis in architecture. Each team’s final work comprises two images, a diptych that represents the transformation of the found object before and afterwards.

Forty-four young architectural practices are invited to imagine the transformation of a series of found objects into architectures as part of the Duo et Débat programme of the Plateforme de la création architecturale at the Cité de l'architecture et du patrimoine. The participants create a collection of imagined architectures, examining questions of economy of means, materials, energy and gestures. The exhibition presents a diversity of practices that explore new narratives using reuse to transform perceptions and translate a citizen attitude.

Among them, Bauclub Brussels office has been invited to take part in the Found objects project. All the contributions to this project will be showcased in a book published and distributed in France and abroad and exhibited in May on the Architectural Creation Platform at the Cité de l’Architecture in Paris. The exhibition’s inauguration and the publication’s launch will take place on 11 May 2023. Bauclub has chosen to present a Brussels fireplace, which is often the subject of questions when Brussels homes are converted.

Another Brussels-based office, Laboratoire, in association with Juliette Blatter (Artist), works on an interlocking concrete block. The starting point of the reflection is to use a heavily transformed material, polluting in its manufacturing process and mass-produced, to meet the challenges of the contemporary city. It is at the same time a wink to the modernism but also an optimistic glance towards tomorrow. It would not be a question of taking a radical turn but to question intelligently what is already there and look frontally at the history to seize it. Beyond a criticism of society, this block used in its acceptance as a limit is committed here to the issues of density, sustainability and permeability of soil to make the city. An ever lasting dance.

Read more about the project and the other participating offices in the press release below.

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• Communiqué de presse (PDF)