{"id":425283,"date":"2026-01-23T16:06:13","date_gmt":"2026-01-23T16:06:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/425283\/"},"modified":"2026-01-23T16:06:13","modified_gmt":"2026-01-23T16:06:13","slug":"aa-exhibition-has-11-installation-of-renee-gailhoustet-apartment","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/425283\/","title":{"rendered":"AA exhibition has 1:1 installation of Rene\u0301e Gailhoustet apartment"},"content":{"rendered":"

An exhibition<\/a> exploring a brutalist<\/a> social housing complex in Paris<\/a> by Algerian-French architect Rene\u0301e Gailhoustet<\/a> has opened at the Architectural Association<\/a> in London<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Titled Rene\u0301e Gailhoustet: A Thousand and One Ways of Living, the retrospective exhibition explores the work of the late architect, who was awarded the Royal Academy Architecture Prize in 2022<\/a> for her lifelong commitment to improving French social housing.<\/p>\n

The exhibition was curated by Architectural Association<\/a> (AA) tutor Nichola Barrington-Leach, who wanted to spotlight the 1970s Le Li\u00e9gat social housing project \u2013 Gailhoustet’s former home and best-known project.<\/p>\n

\"ViewA retrospective exhibition on Algerian-French architect Rene\u0301e Gailhoustet has opened at the Architectural Association<\/p>\n

Held within the AA’s Front Members’ Room and Bar, the exhibition centres on a 1:1-scale installation of one of the complex’s apartments, crafted from draping paper walls that reinterpret flexible internal partitions.<\/p>\n

“The ambition of the exhibition was to really bring one of the flats into the AA,” Barrington-Leach told Dezeen at the exhibition opening.<\/p>\n

“How can we attempt to show her space rather than just her ideas?”<\/p>\n

\"Rene\u0301eThe exhibition was curated by Nichola Barrington-Leach<\/p>\n

Located in Ivry-sur-Seine, Le Li\u00e9gat was built in the early 1970s during the post-war period, which is reflected in its austere, 10-storey-tall concrete exterior.<\/p>\n

Its angular form is composed of intersecting hexagonal volumes lined with planted external terraces.<\/p>\n

Inside, Gailhoustet designed each apartment’s layout to optimise light, openness, and adaptability for their respective residents, Barrington-Leach explained. This layout was often organised around a generous central space, off which additional rooms are accessed through adaptable, wooden partitions.<\/p>\n

\"Rene\u0301eIt centres on Gailhoustet’s Le Li\u00e9gat social housing project<\/p>\n

“Gailhoustet doesn’t just think of it as you deserve a box, or seven square meters, or, let’s standardise everything,” Barrington-Leach said.<\/p>\n

“She starts to question, well, what can we provide that’s more and how can we give them as much as we can?” she continued.<\/p>\n

“Every single person has something, and it might be different, but they have something.”<\/p>\n

\"ModelMetal stands display maquettes and drawings of Le Li\u00e9gat. Photo by Elena Andreea Teleaga<\/p>\n

Keen to highlight this quality of Gailhoustet’s work, Barrington-Leach modelled the installation on a series of apartment floor plans, using hanging paper walls with cut-out openings to reflect the apartments’ “extremely light” partitions.<\/p>\n

“I wanted to start with this idea of readaptation and very flexible space,” she said. “The idea of hanging was a loose way to do that.”<\/p>\n

“I also call her partitions ‘cardboard partitions’, so you have a strong infrastructure, but actually the partitions are extremely light.”<\/p>\n

“People change them, they open up, they change the wallpaper on them,” she continued. “And so the paper is not only a symbol of like just paint hanging, but it’s also this idea that it could change very quickly.”<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\"Ren\u00e9e<\/p>\n

Social housing pioneer Ren\u00e9e Gailhoustet wins Royal Academy Architecture Prize\n\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/a><\/p>\n

Alongside the installation, thin, metal tables were used to display maquettes, drawings and detailed studies of Le Li\u00e9gat, which are complemented by photography by Sacha Trouiller and Valerie Sadoun.<\/p>\n

Barrington-Leach, who is founder of London-based architecture studio NVBL<\/a>, hopes that Gailhoustet’s\u00a0people-centred approach can offer insight into designing with care in what is now largely a profit-led industry.<\/p>\n

“I think that often what we do in a developer world that’s profit led is think we have to meet certain ways of living, and that’s been regimented into a typology that actually never existed before,” she said.<\/p>\n

“You end up working with the market rather than working with the people,” she continued. “And I think that we can learn a lot from [Gailhoustet’s] philosophy, and her value and position in how she saw how people live.”<\/p>\n

\"Rene\u0301eA 1:1 paper installation was added to the gallery space<\/p>\n

The exhibition, which is on display at the AA until 21 March, builds on work undertaken by Barrington-Leach as part of the Royal Academy of Arts 2023 Residency at the Parisian housing complex.<\/p>\n

It also precedes the launch of Rene\u0301e Gailhoustet, a book edited by Barrington-Leach and published by AA Publications, which celebrates the late architect’s career.<\/p>\n

Elsewhere, the Palais de Lom\u00e9 showcase in Togo featured objects and installations that demonstrate the scope and diversity of west African design<\/a> and Kwangho Lee created anime-informed chairs from sponge pipes and nylon ropes for his Ghost in the Shell exhibition in Tokyo<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The photography is by Philip Dale Nogare unless otherwise stated.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"An exhibition exploring a brutalist social housing complex in Paris by Algerian-French architect Rene\u0301e Gailhoustet has opened at…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":425284,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[56],"tags":[202488,228,226,227,229,88,9543,1150,202489,64879,64880,40327],"class_list":{"0":"post-425283","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-arts-and-design","8":"tag-architectural-association","9":"tag-arts","10":"tag-arts-and-design","11":"tag-artsanddesign","12":"tag-design","13":"tag-entertainment","14":"tag-exhibitions","15":"tag-london","16":"tag-renu00e9e-gailhoustet","17":"tag-sectionall","18":"tag-sectionarchitecture","19":"tag-social-housing"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/425283","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=425283"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/425283\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/425284"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=425283"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=425283"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=425283"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}