Experience

168 pages, Japanese/English

The Paris-based architecture firm Experience is headed by Tristan Chadney, Laurent Esmilaire, and Éric Lapierre. They describe their approach towards architecture as cultural and typological, where they venture in search of the “marvellous”. Experience’s meditations on architectural form are so rational that they sometimes loop into the surreal, a paradox apparent in the nineteen works presented in this issue: Palaiseau Student Housing, Chris Marker Residence, Berthelot Collective Housing, Verdeaux School Complex, and more. Notably, the firm imagines housing not as a mechanical repetition of units but as a system of heterogenous parts akin to a living organism.