This 464th issue represents the beginning of a new chapter for the magazine, with a new look and a new editorial approach that places it at the crossroads of society and knowledge, because, as it is said in the French law since 1977, ’architecture is an expression of culture’.

[…] and war began, that is, an event took place opposed to human reason and to human nature
    Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace, 1867

For this first issue of the year, AA has chosen to confront the inevitable reality that is shaking up our contemporary societies: that of wars, conflicts and struggles. Rather than glossing over the foundations of war, which would have led us down the dreary path of the excesses of an individualistic and tyrannical humanity, AA chose to identify the conditions for a possible peace. Against violence and the systems of domination that have permeated our entire societies, two attitudes are possible: defence or struggle. Culture plays a key role in the fight against modern tyranny, because it possesses an extraordinary power: that of dispelling the shadow and its despair, of inciting those who have been struck down to rise again, to lift themselves up and become one body.

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To-read : deputy editors Clémentine Roland and Anastasia de Villepin’s full editorial

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AA 464 « War & Peace », spring 2025
Now available on our online shop

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In this issue

COVER artwork by Tiffany Chung
Detail of Water Dreamscape Scroll: the gangster named Jacky, the sleepers, and the exodus (2017-2018), watercolour on paper, 113.5×924.5 cm.
This painting is part of the Vietnam Exodus History Learning Project, carried out in collaboration with Hồ Hưng and Huỳnh Quốc Bảo.

INTRODUCTION
The Ramparts of Peace
Clémentine Roland and Anastasia de Villepin

GEOPOLITICS
The Ecology of War, interview with Pierre Charbonnier
Timothée Duverger

PHOTOGRAPHY
L’Anneau de la Mémoire
Philippe Prost, photographs by Luc Boegly

ARCHITECTURE
Emergency Architecture: An Evolving Landscape
Clémentine Roland

CARTOGRAPHY
A Cartography of Genocide
Forensic Architecture

ARCHITECTURE
Rizvi Hassan, Rohingya Cultural Memory Centre, Bangladesh
Anastasia de Villepin

ART
Interview with Tiffany Chung, Embroidery and Migrations
Yên Bui

DESIGN
Catalytic Action, Lebanon and Iraq

ARCHITECTURE
Interview with IW Lab, « Damascus belongs to no one »
Maryse Quinton

HISTORY
Northern Ireland, Walls and Bridges
Valérie de Saint-Do

MUSIC
Luminous Voices Amid Chaotic Times
Maxime Jammet

ENVIRONMENT
Collectif WoMin, interview with Reine Fadonougbo Baimey
Christelle Granja

ARCHITECTURE
Architectural Pioneering Consultants, Burtinle District Hospital
Clémentine Roland

POETRY
María Mercedes Carranza, Word of Rebellion

ARCHITECTURE
Reservoir A, Memorial, Charleroi
Clémentine Roland

HERITAGE
balbek bureau, Re:Ukraine Villages

URBANISM
The Cultural War Effort of Lviv, discussion between Martin Duplantien and Andriy Sadovyi, Mayor of Lviv, Ukraine
Anastasia de Villepin, illustrated by Oleksander Grebenyuk

Other highlights

An exhibition on wool designed and staged by Formafantasma; a tribute to the historian Françoise Choay; the work of students from two of France’s architecture schools, ENSA Paris-Malaquais and ENSA Paris-Val de Seine, for the AlUla oasis; the exhibition “Reclaim Architecture. What feminist and decolonial thinking is doing to architecture” at ENSA Grenoble; Jacquemus mannequins parading on the parquet floor of Auguste Perret’s Parisian flat; Chu Ming Silveira’s iconic Brazilian telephone booths; arts and crafts, industrial design and self-edition with designer Patrick Jouin; solutions for landscaping outdoor spaces; the history of Flos as told by Jason Brackenbury, the brand’s director for France; and the Panorama di Venezia by painter Giovanni Biasin, brought to light by iGuzzini.

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