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Architects: LT2A, OPEN ARCHITECTES
- Area: 3000 m²
- Year: 2023
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Manufacturers: Knauf




A new space dedicated to contemporary art on the Île Seguin, in the Greater Paris area, is opening in October 2026. The new cultural institution, named "Large," will be housed in a building designed by Catalan architects and Pritzker Prize recipients RCR Arquitectes, the studio's first project in Paris. It is situated on La Pointe des Arts, a large-scale redevelopment of the Île Seguin's former industrial area into a mixed-use complex spanning more than 53,000 m² and focused on arts and culture. The project's architectural massing follows the stratification concept set out in the masterplan by Ateliers Jean Nouvel. The institution will open with the exhibition "Imaginary Engine: From Masterpieces of the Collection Renault to Artists of Today," bringing together 55 artists from 23 countries to explore the relationship between humanity and machines, in tribute to the site's industrial history and Renault's decades-long collaboration with artists.

Urban planning is often confused with adjacent disciplines: urban design, environmental policy, civic strategy, local politics, or data analytics. Moreover, the overlap in training and responsibilities between planning and urban practices makes the field difficult to define clearly. In practice, it is often easier to recognize the consequences of bad planning than to articulate the outcomes of good planning. When planning is working well for residents, it should disappear altogether. It should remove friction from daily life so that people would not think to credit a discipline at all. At its core, urban planning is the relationship people have with their environments, and when that relationship is functioning, the mechanics of housing, transportation, affordability, access, and inclusion should feel ordinary and expected.
This has not always been the lived experiences of planning practices, and in many places, it still is not. Urban planning has historically served as an instrument of division, used to segregate, exclude, and erase communities under the language of progress and order. Zoning maps, infrastructure investment, and land-use decisions are expressions of who holds power and that history is embedded in the boundaries that continue to organize cities around the world. It is embedded socially, as well as physically, in the assumption that participation in planning requires expertise or formal training that most residents lack.


The Architects' Association of the Province of Buenos Aires – District 2 (CAPBA D2) has presented "Paisajes a la deriva / Derivas sur urbanas," an editorial project that offers a critical, sensitive, and contemporary perspective on the territory and architectural works of the Buenos Aires metropolitan south. The nearly 700-page book is the result of nearly three years of research, editorial production, and collective effort, bringing together reflections, projects, cartographies, photographs, and debates surrounding the landscapes, infrastructures, architectures, and ways of inhabiting District 2, which encompasses a vast territory of the southern AMBA (Buenos Aires Metropolitan Area).


What does climate change have to do with the epidemic of loneliness?
Why are our homes increasingly isolating us from nature?
What are the consequences of our obsession with efficiency, control, and comfort?
Are there healthy alternatives to air conditioning and heating?
How can we create regenerative cities and buildings?



