ARCHI FRANCE — AFEX

ARCHI FRANCE

French architects have forged a reputation for excellence around the world. While remaining true to the skills and practices developed in France when working internationally, they also display a remarkable capacity for adaptation.

Their architectural culture enriches international projects and in turn benefi ts from local rules and approaches. What does French architectural culture bring when it is deployed in a different context? How does the dialogue between heritage and modernity, tradition and innovation and environmental constraints and creativity translate in practice?

Published on the initiative of the association Architectes Français à l’Export, this book lists the 2018, 2020, 2021 and 2023 Afex Grand Prix fi nalists. The forty-two buildings, which are representative of French expertise, display both originality and creative diversity, as well as the ability of the architects to tackle the key issues facing a changing world.


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Exporting French architecture

This book is the second volume in a collection instigated to mark the 20th anniversary of Afex. Red follows blue and naturally the following edition will be white. Intended to promote our skills, it will be sent to French embassies throughout the world. It presents fifty projects designed by French architects overseas. We want to showcase and publicise these projects rewarded with the Afex Grand Prix since 2018. These projects, which vary widely in nature and scope, are discreet or flamboyant flagships of our architecture as built, seen and experienced by people around the world. Often completed under difficult conditions, they are all remarkable and successful.

From the most prestigious to the more modest, these buildings give substance and life to a series of encounters: that of cultures, a source of richness, but also techniques and technologies linked to the history and development of countries. The book pays tribute to the quality of our architects who build all over the world, enriching their own work and what is possible beyond our borders. It also testifies to the quality of the dialogue established with foreign clients to meet their needs and objectives.

In a world with limited resources but unlimited needs, Afex has supported French architects on this journey, which is strewn with pitfalls as well as promises, for more than two decades, to help them respond, effectively and without getting lost, to the challenge of building a new world each time further, always closer.

Réda Amalou

Architect, president of Afex



Shaping tomorrow’s world

It is a source of great pride to see French architects giving shape and life to magnificent projects throughout the world. Thanks to their vision, audacity and creativity, architects help us to imagine the world of tomorrow. In each adventure documented in this book, they have succeeded in providing a local a solution that is both beautiful and appropriate. For many years, French architects have been known for their ability to undertake complex projects, such as infrastructure or cultural facilities, while questioning the role of architecture in a world that has yet to make its ecological transition.

This transition requires a regular critical review of architectural and urban planning practice. Transform rather than demolish, modify, adapt, intelligently conserve, build differently, understand each intrinsic project, find the right balance between the use of materials and contemporary forms: these parameters precede every development project today.

Afex supports architects in this approach and, thanks to this collective commitment, many countries now call on French architects to carry out projects that are more accountable and more respectful of the environment. From the Yves Saint Laurent Museum in Marrakech to the recent development of an eco-historical path in Taiwan and the bioclimatic facade of the Summers building in Argentina, I am delighted that all these talented architects are rethinking and re-enchanting our public spaces.

Let’s continue to write this story together.

Rima Abdul Malak

Minister of Culture


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