After focusing on housing cooperatives in Zurich, this year the French association of State-Adviser Architects turned its attention to rurality. And us with them :  AHA had the privilege of organizing their seminar at the Royal Saltworks of Arc-et-Senans, France, and designing the proceedings that have just been released.

Rurality, or rather ruralities... It's important to contextualize, as Simon Teyssou, French Grand Prix de l'Urbanisme winner, reminded us, and to make concrete proposals for the "somewhere," those who belong to these territories, when the "nowhere" can live and work almost anywhere, in the countryside, in the city, even in airports (sounds familiar?).

We also remain fascinated by the phantasmagorical architecture of Claude-Nicolas Ledoux (1736-1806) and by the Royal Saltworks, which alone summarizes the entire history of rurality: presumed infinite natural resources, source of labor, industrialization, deindustrialization, disaffection, then return to heritage (thanks, André Malraux!), until the risk of disconnection from the concerns of current residents of Arc-et-Senans, shining brightly among the remarkable sites. The moral of this story: we are always someone else's rural.


RURAL SPARKS, PROCEEDINGS OF THE 2023 ACE SEMINAR IN ARC-ET-SENANS, FRANCE
EDITORIAL DIRECTION AND WRITING: HERVÉ DUBOIS AND CHRISTOPHE OUHAYOUN, AHA AND HUGO CHRISTY. GRAPHIC DESIGN: AHA, 120 PAGES, FRENCH, ISBN: 9782958763312 .