The architects of Atelier Arcau are always sensitive to the elements of the contexts where they are called on to work. This could be almost the firm’s hallmark, if it were visible, but it is a quality that precedes all visibility. The practice does not produce chameleon architecture, with every project tinged with a local character. Atelier Arcau’s architecture is not versatile, but neither does it rest on a hard line which produces a style identifiable at first glance. It not only sets itself firstly and necessarily in the service of its first function, or simply submits to it, but enhances its value. Xavier Fraud – “You can’t get away from the contextual reading. On whatever terrain it may be, even if it’s really ordinary, our questions will always be the same. How will the project be installed on the site? What will it be able to say? What sense should we give to our intentions? How will the residents and users live in it? All the dimensions of this new arrangement are concerned. Architecture, city planning, and landscape are inseparable, and we believe that their combination lead to harmonious places.” Julien Veyron – “In the ongoing relationship between things urban and architecture, each way of thinking informs the other. What interests us is getting to know the site and who we’re dealing with … The studio approach is first of all anthropological. The logic of projects does not have to do with the form of projects. It has to do with the urbanness you have to reckon with, and the urbanness that we want to develop. Concept is virtual, process is pragmatic.” Xavier Fraud – “We’ve never confined ourselves within a response mode or plan. Does the Arcau studio have a style? I don’t think so. It doesn’t concern me. The architectural expression which has to come out of it can’t be predetermined, so as to preserve always more desire and more freedom.”

• Introduction by Frédéric Paul
• Text by Frédéric Paul
• Essay by Rodolphe el-Khoury
• Edited by Oscar Riera Ojeda

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Contributors Biographies

Atelier Arcau is a French architectural studio that focuses on principles of sociability, hospitality, education, justice, and sustainability. The studio has won several awards, including a World Architecture Award for Civic and Community Building for its Salorge Town Community Building in Pornic, France.

Frédéric Paul is a Head of FRAC Limousin then of Domaine de Kerguéhennec from 1988 to 2010, Frédéric Paul, PhD in Art History, is now freelance writer and curator. He has recently published books and essays on Beatriz Milhazes (Electa), Giuseppe Penone (RMN), Guy de Cointet (Flammarion), Jochen Lempert (König Verlag), and Robert Barry (Cahiers du Musée national d’art moderne).

Rodolphe el-Khoury is Dean of the Miami University School of Architecture. He was Canada Research Chair at the University of Toronto, Head of Architecture at California College of the Arts, and associate professor at Harvard Graduate School of Design. El-Khoury was trained as a historian and an architect; he continues to divide his time between scholarship and practice with Khoury Levit Fong. His books on eighteenth-century European architecture include The Little House, an Architectural Seduction, and See Through Ledoux; Architecture, Theatre and the Pursuit of Transparency. Books on contemporary architecture and urbanism include Monolithic Architecture, Architecture in Fashion, and States of Architecture in the Twenty-first Century: New Directions from the Shanghai Expo.