DANGER COLLAPSE: Analyzing a Ten-Year-Old Photograph from the Paris Banlieue...
“Danger Effondrement” (Danger Collapse) in Aulnay-sous-Bois (North-Eastern Paris banlieue) / Photograph by Léopold Lambert on November 8, 2005 (full photo here) Since September 2004, I have been taking...
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“They Called Your Apartments and Gardens Guerrilla Strongholds.” Burj...
The recent outcry that blamed the Western (social and press) media to bring a disproportionate attention to Friday’s deadly attacks in Paris (Nov. 13, 2015) compared to the two bombs that exploded in...
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State of the Wrong Emergency in Paris
Soldiers in the corridors of the subway / Photo by Léopold Lambert (Nov. 16, 2015) After last January’s double attack (political assassination of journalists, and antisemitic carnage) in Paris, I had...
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The Weaponized Architecture of Paris Northern Banlieue Police Stations Part 2
This article is a sequel of the one written on October 26 about the weaponized architecture of police stations in Paris’ Northern banlieues. Now that the state of emergency has been declared (see...
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The City of the Global South and its Insurrections: Algiers, Cairo, Gaza,...
On November 10th, I was invited by friend Meriem Chabani to give a small lecture in Paris in the context of the exhibition New South that she curated around six architecture students’ thesis projects...
View ArticleState of Emergency in France: An Architectural Reading of the Police...
After a reinvigorating large meeting against islamophobia and the state of emergency in Saint Denis (Paris’ immediate Northern banlieue) yesterday, I want to attempt giving an architectural account of...
View Article“Bjarke’s Panopticon, the Rolling Stones and Slight Misunderstandings,” a...
Project for the Stockholmsporten by BIG (2011) “Bjarke’s Panopticon, the Rolling Stones and Slight Misunderstandings” Conversation with Horizonte (Bauhaus-Universitat Weimar, 2015) Horizonte: Deleuze...
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Precarious Roma Village of Northern Paris: A Few Cautious Considerations
Informal Roma village of the Porte des Poissonniers in Paris (December 20, 2015) / Photograph by Léopold Lambert (all rights reserved) So far, the totality of my photographs on this blog were licensed...
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The Funambulist Magazine 03 (Jan-Feb 2016) CLOTHING POLITICS, Now Published
Happy New Year everyone! In the first days of 2016, I am very happy to announce the launch of the third issue (Jan-Feb 2016) of The Funambulist Magazine dedicated to Clothing Politics. This issue...
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# The Slave Ship: An Operative Architecture Responsible for the Abysmal...
Above: La Marie-Séraphine (1770) / Excerpt from Bertrand Guillet, La Marie-Séraphine: Navire négrier, Nantes: Editions MeMo, 2009. Writing about the open wound that the history of slavery constitutes...
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Mud, Water & Steel: Migrant Bodies, Policed Environment and Humanitarian...
Illustration: Newly ‘built’ refugee camp in Calais’s “Jungle” (source of the photo) Calais and Dunkerque are the two French cities closest to Dover in England. As such, they are are the main ferry...
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Towards a Post-Apartheid Palestine: Atlas of the Israeli Settlements in the...
If I had composed this Atlas of the Israeli Settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem a few years ago, I would have insisted that this inventory of colonial urban typologies constituted an...
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State of Exception Cities: From Boston to Paris, Producing a Police...
This article can be read in the continuity of a previous one, written on December 12, 2015 and published under the title, “State of Emergency in France: An Architectural Reading of the Police...
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Police, Fences, and Containers: A Photographic Report from Calais’“Jungle”
TWO IMPORTANT POINTS: 1. Although the photographs presented here are meant to contribute to a larger imaginary about the Calais’s “Jungle,” they represent only a fragment of it and, as such, can be...
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New French “Pentagon”: The Male Architect and His Military Toy
Last November was inaugurated in South Paris the new building of France’s Ministry of Defense, immediately nicknamed “Pentagon” by journalists for its massiveness and its imperial iconography...
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Fortress Schengen: Report of the Wall as a Spectacular Rumor
Fence recently set up and awaiting barbed wire on its top to materialize the border between Slovenia (i.e. Schengen space) and Croatia / Photo by Léopold Lambert (February 2016) After documenting the...
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The Funambulist Magazine 04 (Mar-Apr 2016): CARCERAL ENVIRONMENTS Is Now Out
Dear readers, I am happy to announce the release of the fourth issue of The Funambulist Magazine. After examining the politics of space/design and bodies of militarized cities, suburbs, and clothing,...
View ArticleThe Impossibility of Innocence: On Architecture’s Intrinsic Exclusionary...
Still from You, the Living by Roy Andersson (2007) Text originally published as “Shelter’s Political Violence,” in Arjen Oosterman and Nick Axel (eds), Shelter, Volume Magazine 46 (2015) Shelter is...
View ArticleArchitecture and Racism: A Much Needed Conversation
As I am currently working on the next issue of The Funambulist Magazine dedicated to Design and Racism, I was particularly interested to listen to the video of the recent round table organized by Mabel...
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Vignettes from the Paris Banlieues: Police Station, Migrant Detention, Social...
Between 2007 and 2008, and since my return to Paris in late 2014, I have been taking numerous Sunday morning bicycle rides in the Paris banlieues (suburbs). I have always been wary to present these...
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