Dars/Menon: Architecture competition for the Académie des Beaux-Arts

The new architecture competition of the Académie des Beaux-Arts was launched in January 2023. Valuing collective work over the long term and encouraging cross-disciplinary thinking were at the heart of the thinking behind the redesign. For this year's competition, applicants were invited to submit a research proposal on the theme of "Writing", a theme that will also be chosen at the official opening session of the five academies in 2022.

The Academy received 40 applications from architects or groups of architects. Following the hearings of the 6 shortlisted teams, the jury, made up of members and correspondents of the architecture section of the Académie des Beaux-Arts, selected the following 4 projects:

- Magasin / Magazine Accattone project - Sophie Dars & Carlo Menon

- Project L'attrape-rêve CompMonks

- Project Le Projet d'Architecture à l'Âge de sa Simulation crédible Max Turnheim

- Project La Spolia Studio Acte - Estelle Barriol

These 4 shortlisted architects/teams will present an exhibition at the Pavillon Comtesse de Caen (Palais de l'Institut de France) from 7 December 2023 to 21 January 2024.

The Magasin / Magazine project

The aim of Sophie Dars and Carlo Menon's Magasin / Magazine project is to create a "Bricoleur / Ingénieur" space where architectural exchanges and productions can take place, showing the genesis of the production of a magazine such as the one they currently publish, "Accattone". They will raise the following question: can a physical place itself be a magazine?

"The project speculates on the etymology of the word magazine, derived from French magasin and Italian magazzino, which introduced into neo-Latin languages the Arabic word makh̬zan, "premises used to store goods". (...) It aims to identify and foreshadow the transformation of a "place to write", a building to be transformed by a succession of interventions of different kinds, a future place of residence, exchange and architectural production. Like a magazine