DESCRIPTION

This year’s programme will be organised in collaboration between the AA Architecture Association, School of Architecture from London and Ecole Nationale Supérieure d'Architecture Paris-Val de Seine (ENSA PVS). The Visiting School will be located in Ault, a small town in the north of France. This will be the first organised programme after renaming the school from AA Visiting School Slovenia to AA Visiting School nanotourism, exposing its core agenda to an entirely new set of possibilities. 

The two-week programme will explore the synergies between the local community and the particular natural forces generating the social, economic and natural conditions of this town, tackling the problems of eroding land of Ault. Once a booming tourist hotspot, nestled on the edge of the picturesque cliffs of the Picardie coastline in France, participants will investigate and identify the possibilities of implementing nanotourist strategies within the continuously negotiated relationship between land and sea.
Nanotourism is a creative critique to the current environmentally and economically unsuitable effects of mainstream tourism. The challenge is how to respond and create locally oriented alternatives through bottom-up processes. Nanotourism aims for smart solutions and innovative design strategies that rely on local materials and social resources.

Participants will research, design and build site-specific projects in 1:1 scale, materialising as organised actions, physical structures or holistic strategies for specific contexts. The workshop is open to all participants, eager to research, design and speculate on the role of architecture within the world’s most thriving economic sector – tourism.

LOCATION

Dry Harbour
Ault, France

PROJECTS

PROGRAMME HEADS

VISITING EXPERTS / CRITICS