Le Parlement de la Recherche – Ce que peut l'architecture

The Parlement de la recherche brought together 22 international architects and architectural researchers in a staged 48 hour closed-door retreat at the couvent Sainte-Marie de La Tourette, a mist-shrouded, timeless refuge away from urgency. Initiated by the Fonds de dotation Quartus pour l'architecture, in partnership with the Ministry of Culture and led by the curatorial duo L'AUC and MBL architectes, le Parlement de la recherche offered an unprecedented moment of reflection, exploration, and collective effervescence to probe the major issues facing our society and to question what architecture can do.
This book, an almost complete transcription of those exchanges, offers a critical mass of concepts, commitments, and lines of thought that reflect architects' current concerns. Communities, property, the "jungle," nomadic critique, nostalgia, the modern project, transformation, housing, and above all, a set of attitudes toward the present time, all are themes to be unfolded and explored for the years ahead.