Du 17.02.2026
au 12.05.2026
Conférences
Rencontres
Discussions

This series of lectures invites you to listen to writers who construct fiction, much like architects design projects. In doing so, they shift perspectives, interpret places differently, embody social movements, highlight contemporary challenges... and invent other possible worlds. These parallel spaces are territories of freedom: they allow us to imagine other arrangements. While inventing potentials, projections and illusions, these narratives pay attention to reality: its protagonists, its places and its temporalities.

By giving a voice to those who write-through their points of view, their practices, their imaginations-the conference cycle will then question how literary fiction can contribute to recharging the architectural project. What are we looking at? Which characters enter the scene? Which voices deserve to be heard? What is made visible or invisible? Which scenes should be composed?

As architects and future architects question the meaning and possible futures of their discipline in a damaged world, can fictional writing be one of the tools architects use in their design work?

Confirmed guests

Tuesday 17 February at 1pm
Nina Leger, Mémoires sauvées de l'eau

Nina Leger is a novelist. Her latest novels are stories of places. Antipolis (Prix écrire la Ville) is the story of a utopia; Mémoires sauvées de l'eau (Prix du roman historique) follows the course of a Californian river from the gold rush to the megafires. In each case, the place is central, not as a character, but as the very substance of the novel.

Nina Leger will share what this practice – writing about places – has taught her and the questions it raises.

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Tuesday 24 February at 1pm
Jean-Baptiste Del Amo, Règne animal

Jean-Baptiste Del Amo's book Règne animal captivates readers with the depth of time it opens up from a single place, which sees generations of a family succeed one another and agricultural practices undergo radical change. The way in which the narrative intertwines living beings and human activities helps to renew our perspective on agricultural territories.

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Tuesday 10 March at 1pm
Aurélien Bellanger, Les derniers jours du Parti socialiste (The Last Days of the Socialist Party)

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Tuesday 17 March at 1pm
Joy Sorman, Le témoin (The Witness)

Joy Sorman's book Le témoin offers an insight into a building, the TGI, a contemporary monument that expresses the relationship that our society has, or thinks it has, with justice. The author's literary work, particularly her precise use of the different spaces in this place, is invaluable in conveying to students an awareness of what the space says about the social relationships that are forged there.

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Tuesday 24 March at 1pm
Philippe Vasset, La Conjuration (The Conspiracy)

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The curators of the series

Gwenaëlle d'Abovilleis an urban planner, a graduate of the Master's programme in urban planning at Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne University and a DE-qualified architect from ENSA Paris La Villette. She is a partner and director of the Ville Ouverte agency, which she founded in 2004.

David Enon is an architect and urban planner, a graduate of Paris-Sorbonne University (2007) and the École d'Architecture de la Ville et des Territoires (2011). He also conducts research and writing projects and works as a project director at TVK.