First look at the 2017 Festival des Architectures Vives installations

The summer Festival des Architectures Vives (or the Lively Architecture Festival) gives visitors and locals alike a chance to explore Montpellier, as they search for a collection of architectural installations tucked away in courtyards across town. 

For the 2017 edition, FAV recently announced the 10 emerging design practices who were invited to realize and construct their proposed installations at various sites around town. Interpreting the 2017 “Emotion” theme in their own way, each site-specific installation will evoke an emotional response “created by the link between the ephemeral installation and the power of the intervention site,” FAV says. The practice ØNA will be in charge of designing the 2017 FAV Information Pavilion, which will be open at the Hôtel Saint Côme to welcome exhibition visitors starting June 7.

The 2017 exhibition will take place on June 13-18. Scroll down to see this year's installations.

“El Dorado” by Collectif Pourquoi Pas - Amandine Riou, Pauline Sémon, Benjamin Poignon , Benoît Bret, Etienne Fressonnet Lyon // France

Project description: “There is a myth going around the treasure’s quest that sways the wealth from materialistic considerations to poetry awareness. In all the stories of adventure, the hero is passing through doubt, even resignation, before reaching, at last, his aim. A wonderment which suspends time, precisely at the moment of the precious discover. The installation is a sensory staging, appealing to the universe of tales and legends. The purpose is to recreate this tiny enchanting moment which made us feeling the originality of the instant. The configuration calls in vision and hearing in the same way. The spectator is hypnotized and attracted to the movement, in motion for a couple of seconds. The swarm of butterflies flying off as we approach, the blows of the wind making the maple’s achenes circle in the air; the installation plays again this famous picture which fix the experience forever in our minds. What if all this legendary treasures were only existing through these volatile times which reveal them?”

“I heart Montpellier” by PistachOffice - Daniel Martín-De Ríos and Francisco Vilar Navarro | Rotterdam // Netherlands

Project description: “IHEARTMNTP is a project that talks about love and affection, passion and contact. As an emotion that we all like to experience, love is the starting point of life; because of it we can do the craziest and most amazing things we could never dream of. There have been a lot of symbols of love and desire through history. From Venice to Paris, from Playboy to Marilyn, all of them have change our perception about how we live and experience it. The goal of the project is to make Montpellier and our project, during one week, the world capital of love. The proposal is made by two elements which work together. The circular bench is designed following the positions of kissing, flirting or lying. On top of it a floating heart will emerge out of the courtyard, giving the project a city-scale dimension, working as an attraction point and lighting Montpellier in its week of love.”

“La Madeleine” by Atelier MicroMega - Justine Guyard, Alexandre Lahaye, Charlie Granjon, Thomas Pourteyroux, and Gauthier Martinez | Lyon // France

Project description: “The emotion is multiple. It structures our relationship to the other, to what surrounds us. Activated by the five senses, an odor, a vision or a taste stimulates in each of us different emotions. They are the experience of what is past, what is being, what will be. The power of nostalgia is to provoke through the vision of the same object completely different emotions in each of us. Proust’s Madeleine is the link between the past emotion that structures us and the thrill that sends us into the future. The installation rests on architecture, space and matter to play with our nostalgia. It invites the visitor to be moved by traveling through it, interacting with it, echoing his childhood memories. The smooth, perfect cube refers to adulthood. The world that it contains: evolutionary, creative and malleable appeals to the child, making the space of the cave his cabin.”

“The Curtain” by Maria Anton Barco, Maria Salan, and Maria Ramos | Madrid // Spain

Project description: “The emotion caused by the beauty of nature, transforms the artificial installation into a real landscape. Those landscapes change over time, as well as light, and color of a summer day in South of France. Somehow the landscape speaks about the history of a place. This installation freezes the time and changes when the light sneaks through the cascades of leaves that give access to the courtyard. The installation, as ephemeral as nature through the seasons, aims to replicate the metaphoric deconstruction of a tree where the urban story of Montpellier will be told. The key moments of the city will be inscribed between each growth ring of the tree.”

“Souvenir Particulier” by Collectif Commun - Sophia Villepinte and Jeanne Bénony | Paris // France

Project description: “Some places have the genius to awaken emotions from our past. The installation in the Hotel Rozel is aiming at stimulating these emotions: those that sleep inside each one of us as the reflection of our own history. Link from art to architecture, the installation raises up the question of the feelings caused by the space, and the sensitive experience of its pathway. In the center, it reveals objects that are the architect's interpretation of the wishes and emotions expressed by his sponsor. In the heart of the courtyard, the visitor slips into the narrow passage between the thick walls of the patio and along a white wall where at the bend of a curve, he is invited to observe the staging of the metaphorical image of his own nostalgic emotions. There, objects float, symbols of lived places, provoking in each of us a return on its own history, its childhood and its first drawings.”

“TR 24” by BEN-DAO - Bennis Sélim and Daoudi Nejm | Paris // France

Project description: “Dare get into this turnstile game! The goal is to cross the installation, guided by your choice, over the "doors" you push. The sobriety and purity of the installation are meant to reflect a certain respect for the building that frames it. The goal is, in a slightly neutral but visibly massive way, to fill the emptiness specific to a courtyard. The installation questions the function of a particular hotel courtyard. Its characteristic as a waypoint is exacerbated, pushed to the extreme. It is meant to make people aware, in an experimental way that the repetition of a simple module in architecture can lead to a real thrill. Our idea is to attract the curiosity of the visitors, to incite them to sneak into a repetitive and stressful space. The installation becomes an endless labyrinth, with no entry nor exit, making the visitors feel as if time was extending, with the impression of getting lost or that they will never get out. However, since the exercise is not binding, it doesn’t block nor extend the distances to walk between the different accesses.”

“Forme Sauvage” by Lilit Sarkisian | Nantes // France

Project description: “Emotion is a complex psychophysiological experience of an individual's state of mind when responding to biochemical and environmental influences. How does a vivid architecture interact with the cerebral cortex of the curious? The project acts as a stimulus, activating the sensory receptors of each one. The emotion is thus made by the sudden delights of the senses. From the street, the undecided form calls the nosy, the mist refreshes the visitor, fragrance hangs in the courtyard. A liquid form freezes. A succession of plates made of rigid transparent plastic is softened by a thermal distortion. The form unspeakable, without contour. A net shape with infinite interpretation. The idea is not to produce an architecture but to generate a striking space. A discreet device vaporizes the perfume. This afternoon in Montpellier leaves one more memory. For such an intervention the intimacy proposed by the court of the music conservatory seemed to us optimal to the evocation of the reverie.”

AAA by ODD - Mairi Ogilvie, Caroline Diaz, and Lauriane Dupont | Montpellier // France; London // Great Britain

Project description: “The courtyard of the Hôtel de Griffy is a haven of peace, in stark contrast to the hustle and bustle of rue de l’Aiguillerie. Similarly, the proposed installation is a transition between two very different spaces, ending with a moment of reflection. On entering the courtyard, the visitor finds himself confronted by a black wall. On closer inspection, he sees there is an entrance. One emotion can be quickly replaced by another. Interest transforms into anticipation. He crosses the threshold and is this time confronted by a dark, twisted passageway, lit only by a thin shard of light at the far end. Anticipation transforms into apprehension and even anxiety. A series of emotions unfold during the transition from one space to another; Anticipation, Apprehension and Anxiety. Which one will take hold?”

Paper Cloud by Studio 3A - Kazuya Katagiri, Luis Lopez Resendez, and Marco Budéus | Tokyo // Japan / Monterrey // Mexico / Hamburg // Germany

Project description: “Paper Cloud elaborates a space of illusion and delusion. This phenomenal environment is filled with light and shadow by reflecting various colors in different time. Visitors are responding to these sequential changes through the tactile sense, and their bodies are linked to the space as a part of it. Paper Cloud is composed of about 2,000 pieces of plastic laminated paper rings assembled without any bolts and glues but simply slotting into each other. This simply assembled monochromatic paper structure contrasts with the massiveness of the stone pavement and walls in the courtyard. However once stepping into inside, this cloud like structure merges with light and disappears its existence like bubbles. The intangible experience will expose delusion of expression and awake their emotion by the illusion.”

“Immersion” by Lucia Martinez Pluchino and Raquel Duran Puente | Bordeaux // France

Project description: “According to the definition of emotion, not only the physique context but also a personal factor influences our emotional response to stimuli: memories, life experience, character or mood. This festival provides us with a site and, through its transformation, challenges us to generate an emotion. These courts, that nowadays serve as passages, will become for a few days in containers of emotion. We would like to take this idea to its limit filling one of the courts with balloons. It will feel like a sea of balloons, dragging the public to experience a total immersion. Some may find peace feeling isolated, hidden, protected. Others could return to childhood wanting to play out to exhaustion. An annoyed person could simply vent his frustrations and return to serenity all over again. Pleasure, euphoria, well-being, anguish, playfulness, disorientation… Whatever the case may be, we are convinced of one thing: nobody will remain indifferent.”

2017 FAV Pavilion designed by ØNA - Maxime Agred, Quentin Giraud, Jean-Baptiste Blondel et Julien Gueganou | Montpellier // France

Project description“The pavilion of the Festival des Architectures Vives 2017 experiments the spatial connection created by a simple architectural element, the white column. Its repetition allows to create a forest of poles generating a new spatiality and a dialogue with the existing stone columns. The idea of the pavilion is to pay tribute to these supporting elements which structure the place creating different sequences and perceptions. The theme of this edition, the emotion results from the displacement and way within the pavilion. The repetition, the positioning and the heights of the vertical elements allow to generate various spatial sensations such as tightening, opening or even requiring. Vertical and slim work, the pavilion aims to pay tribute to the spatial composition of the historic courtyard by the performance of the steel material.”

You can learn about the teams here. Check out installations from previous FAVs in the links below.

Images courtesy of 2017 Festival des Architectures.