Le laboratoire d'architecture

Winter 2023, in the desert between Tunisia and Algeria. A sedentarised nomad describes: “Our grandparents were still nomads; our parents earned their life by cultivating dates in artificial oases. Now, we work in tourism. We are the last ones to have experienced the paths of the desert. For our children, this knowledge is already lost.”
Based on an ongoing action research project on nomadic architecture in Africa and Europe, the aim of this installation is first to denounce the forced indignity of nomadic living conditions and to state the possibilities of an architecture of resistance and hospitality.
Drawings show the surveys of the real living spaces of nomads superposed to their dreamed projects. The film-narratives relate experiences of living in the desert and in these official ‘camps’, unliveable yet inhabited. The mediums resonate together to form a non-figurative fable of the nomadic world which questions our own way of inhabiting.

Authorial collaborators
Simon Durand, Hamed Kriouane, Yann Gross (Video)
Team
Bachelor’s and Master’s degree students at the ENAC - EPFL architectural school, Studio Lacaille & Ayoub 2022-2023: Meghan Archimi, Arudsagini Arutselvan, Zoé Bahy, Léo Bastianelli, Loïse Boulnoix, Rebecca Broye, Adrien Clairac, Rita D’Elia, Charles Darrousez, Laure Dekoninck, Léa Delessert, Dimitri Descloux, Gaëtan Détraz, Antoine Foehrenbacher, Nikita Giaccari, Marion Gisiger, Yousra Hajoubi, Sébastien Hasler, Charline Hugues, Youssef Kali, Ambre Lassus, Arthur Lüthy, Nathalie Marj, Nadège Mouine, Zineb Mustapha, Silvia Narducci, Linda Orakwe, Abigail Riand, Jana Schiefer, Mélanie Schroff, Dylan Schwaiger, Isabel Vilar Azcárate
With the additional support of
École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne EPFL, Fondation Assurer l’avenir des Gens du Voyage Suisses, Office fédéral de la culture OFC, République et canton de Genève, Swiss Arts Council Pro Helvetia