Speakers

Dominique Alba has worked in architectural practice and for local authorities in Paris and Greater Paris. After directing the Pavillon de l’Arsenal and the Atelier parisien d’urbanisme, she became Managing Director of Ateliers Jean Nouvel in 2022. Her career connects architectural practice with reflection on the city.

Co-founder of the architecture and scenography practice Freaks, Guillaume Aubry also pursues artistic and theoretical research. Trained in Paris and Tokyo, he holds a doctorate in art. His practice brings together architecture, scenography and visual art to explore our intimate and collective relationships with landscape.

After working in documentary film and supporting the performing arts, Noémie Behr joined the Bureau des guides du GR2013 in 2020. She supports projects that connect the exploration of places, artistic practice and public policy across the Marseille metropolitan area.

Julien Berthier creates objects that are plausible yet fictional, placing them in public space. Through irony and ambiguity, his interventions shift our perspective on everyday uses and social conventions. His work opens up reflection on the artist’s role in shaping our shared world.

Trained in visual arts, aesthetics and art studies, Marie-Pierre Bonniol works internationally. Associated with Le Volcan in Le Havre for the 2024–2025 season through the Cnap’s CURA programme, she explores experimental film, video art and childhood through screenings and workshops.

A graduate of the Sciences Po School of Public Affairs, Ariane Brioist works on cultural policy and local public action. Since 2022, she has coordinated the École des Arts Décoratifs’ Design des Territoires programme, which connects creative practices with the needs of places and the people who shape them.

Meriem Chabani explores the social, political and economic dynamics that shape territories. Her practice combines architectural projects, research and teaching, notably at Paris-Malaquais and Harvard. She considers practices of care, preservation and transmission as resources for thinking about urban ecologies.

French-Canadian artist Grégory Chatonsky has explored the relationship between materiality and digital technology since the 1990s. At the intersection of artificial imagination and human experience, his work questions the capacity of machines to produce images and forms from data gathered on the web.

Founder of the Bureau des paysages in 1983 and recipient of the Grand Prix de l’urbanisme in 2000, Alexandre Chemetoff develops a practice attentive to what already exists. His projects connect architecture, landscape and urban transformation, drawing on places, their uses and the possibilities offered by each situation.

Isabelle Daëron creates objects and installations in relation to their surroundings. By working with water, wind and light, she reveals the resources of a place and explores their role in urban space. Her work connects creative practice, uses and ecological concerns.

Vianney Delourme co-founded Enlarge your Paris, an independent publication dedicated to Greater Paris, its culture and its ecology. He organises urban walks and events that invite people to discover places, landscapes and collective initiatives from a different perspective.

Nicolas Détrie is co-founder and director of Yes We Camp, an association that pioneered temporary urbanism. After an initial temporary campsite in Marseille in 2013, he developed landmark places such as Les Grands Voisins in Paris, and Coco Velten and Foresta in Marseille. These shared spaces bring together social accommodation, culture and economic activities. A member of the Ashoka network of social entrepreneurs, he advocates open places where people from very different backgrounds learn to live together.

Founder of the property development group Emerige, Laurent Dumas supports contemporary French art. In 2014, he established the Bourse Révélations Emerige for emerging artists. He also participates in “1 immeuble, 1 œuvre” (“One Building, One Artwork”), an initiative that encourages art commissions in the places where people live.

Oriane Durand supports contemporary French creative practice in the visual arts and architecture. As head of the Visual Arts Office at the Institut français d’Allemagne at the time of her talk, she supported exchanges with art professionals and emerging curators.

Fériel Fodil directs Villa Hegra, a Franco-Saudi cultural institution based in AlUla. Her career has taken her from financial and strategic management of Abu Dhabi’s Cultural District to the position of Deputy Managing Director at the Château de Chantilly. A graduate of ESCP, she supports the development of international cultural projects.

A graduate of ENSA Paris-Malaquais, Cécile Gaudard develops a practice that combines architecture and drawing. In 2023, her project “The Caretakers — An exploration on traumatized landscapes” won first prize in the ideas competition “Growing Villages — The future is not metropolitan”, supported by the PERSPEKTIVE fund.

Peter Gorschlüter became director of Museum Folkwang in Essen in 2018, after serving as deputy director of the Museum of Modern Art in Frankfurt. His work explores the relationship between art and its audiences, notably through projects that open the museum up to the city and its communities.

After working at La Bellevilloise and founding the consultancy Les Apaches, Maxence Gourdault-Montagne joined Logeo Seine. Within this social housing company, he works on the design and development of urban property projects that seek to improve the experience of living in a home.

Co-founders of the Paris-based practice Jakob+MacFarlane in 1998, Dominique Jakob and Brendan MacFarlane approach architecture as a laboratory for experimentation. At the intersection of urban planning and design, their practice explores the questions raised by the environmental transition and the possibilities of digital culture.

Antoine Lagneau studies urban and peri-urban agriculture and the socio-ecological transition of territories, particularly in working-class neighbourhoods. An associate researcher at the LIR3S laboratory at the University of Burgundy, he took part in Métamorphoses as the officer responsible for “Urban Agriculture / Quartiers fertiles” at ANRU, France’s National Agency for Urban Renewal.

Co-founders of the Paris-based practice Jakob+MacFarlane in 1998, Dominique Jakob and Brendan MacFarlane approach architecture as a laboratory for experimentation. At the intersection of urban planning and design, their practice explores the questions raised by the environmental transition and the possibilities of digital culture.

Founder of Emilieu Studio in 2019, Paul Emilieu Marchesseau advocates an approach to interior architecture that incorporates ecological concerns. His projects seek to improve living conditions and the relationships between people and their spaces. He also teaches design and interior architecture.

A professor at the Conservatoire national des arts et métiers, Lucie Marinier studies art in public space, the missions of museums and sustainable development in culture. Her experience within local authorities and cultural institutions informs her thinking on the lives of artworks and their uses.

Fiona Meadows combines architectural education, cultural programming and curating. At the Cité de l’architecture et du patrimoine, she develops projects focusing in particular on small-scale architecture and Africa. Her work explores how modest interventions can transform uses and public space.

Trained in visual arts and architecture, Clarisse Merlet founded FabBRICK in 2018. She transforms worn clothing and fabric offcuts into materials for design and architecture. Her approach offers a practical response to textile waste and the ecological challenges facing the construction sector.

An architect active in Le Havre, Dorothée Navarre is involved with the Maison de l’architecture de Normandie — le Forum and was president of the association Les gens des lieux at the time of her talk. This collective of architects, urban planners and landscape architects creates temporary installations in situ through collaborative projects outside conventional frameworks.

Co-founder of the Wonder collective in 2013 and a graduate of the Arts Décoratifs in Paris, Nelson Pernisco creates sculptures and installations combining architecture, organic materials and industrial elements. His hybrid landscapes question the transformations of matter and the remnants of our thermo-industrial civilisation.

An architect and founder of Ax’6 Architecture, Jean-Denis Salesse works at the interface between cities and ports. His career combines urban planning, public buildings and port infrastructure. In Le Havre, he has contributed notably to projects at the Quai de Southampton, the Port Center and Un Été au Havre.

An alumnus of the École normale supérieure, Emmanuel Tibloux has taught at university and directed several art and design schools in Valence, Saint-Étienne and Lyon. Director of the École des Arts Décoratifs at the time of his talk, he also chaired the French national association of higher art schools from 2009 to 2017.

Architect and urban planner Antonella Tufano conducts research on landscapes, design and ways of shaping cities. A professor at Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne at the time of her talk, she led the series “La ville au prisme des genres” (“The City through Gender Lenses”) with Fiona Meadows at the Cité de l’architecture.

Marc Vatinel describes himself as a “jardiniste” and founded the Pré Carré studio, which brings landscape design together with hands-on gardening. He imagines gardens by working with the conditions of each place and the dynamics of living systems, rather than seeking to constrain them or freeze their evolution.

Trained in philosophy, Pascal Yonet became director of Vent des Forêts in the Meuse in 2008, after serving as deputy director of the Cneai in Chatou. His work brings together research, production and the presentation of contemporary art in agricultural and forest landscapes.

Trained at the École normale supérieure de Lyon and the London School of Economics, Max Yvetot has worked for Greater London, Greater Paris and the urban strategy consultancy Strelka KB in Moscow. He took part in Métamorphoses as Managing Director of the Agence d’urbanisme Le Havre Estuaire de la Seine.