Open lecture: THE CENTURY OF RE-

Open lecture: THE CENTURY OF RE-
Clément Blanchet
Founder of Clément Blanchet Architecture

12/01/2026
12:00
AULA MAGNA
FAU,UPT
Nënë Tereza Square

Architecture today cannot be reduced to object, style, or signature.

It is a process — a dynamic system of relations.

It is the collision of constraints, the negotiation of forces, the continuous redefinition of what it means to build.

Concepts are neither ideal nor empirical. They are constructed. Architecture, too, is construction — not only of space, but of thought, of frameworks, of possibilities.

The project begins with problematization. Too often, this is flattened into a checklist of codes, limits, and inherited conditions. Yet it is precisely in the accumulation of such demands that the true potential of architecture emerges. Constraint is not the enemy. Complexity is not paralysis. Together, they form the raw matter of invention.

We live in the Century of RE–
We RE-build.
We RE-use.
We RE-draw.
We RE-frame.
We RE-cycle.
We RE-invent.

This is not nostalgia. It is not denial. It is the act of re-arming architecture.
To reclaim its agency.
To confront the aesthetics of power with the urgency of resources.
To transform symbolic urban forms into contemporary situations.
Architecture must be understood not as a finished object, but as an active system.
An interface between form and resource, between city and milieu.
A generator of effects — spatial, social, climatic, political.
To practice architecture as process is to exceed standards, to question conventions, to invent new forms of performance.
Not efficiency alone, but significance.
Not management, but imagination.
Not repetition, but reinvention.
The task is clear: to think architecture as situation, as engagement, as commitment.
To move beyond the passive reproduction of the built environment.
To embrace the unfinished, the reversible, the transformative.
The Century of RE– is already here.
Our task is to give it form.

Clément Blanchet is a French architect, teacher and critic, actively practicing in the fields of architectural theory, urbanism, and cultural investigations. Previously partner at OMA, and after living/working internationally for 15 years, he founded Clément Blanchet Architecture (CBA) in May 2014 in Paris. The practice is structured as a laboratory, researching, informing and generating architecture/urbanism in all its forms. In July 2017 Blanchet has been appointed chief architect of the Annecy area (FR). The international experience reflects in the office activity: from being invited to international competitions in USA, Asia and Europe to currently designing a masterplan and a hotel complex in Tbilisi (Georgia) and a new urban development in Shenzhen (Asia) and Shanghai. In March 2021, Clément Blanchet Architecture has been awarded winner of the International anonymous competition for the Sicilian Headquarter in Palermo (IT – with Leclercq and Laisné) In France the office has been focusing on education issues through several winning competitions: the Innovation Campus in Antony (FR) (2017), the Carrefour Research and Development Center Saclay (FR) (2017). Recently, the agency won an international competition for the creation of a 1,500-seat auditorium as part of the Grand Paris. In June 2019, CBA won the construction of the 15000 seats new BAUER stadium in Saint-Ouen (FR), with SCAU. Clément Blanchet is leading urbanist in charge of Metz urban development in METZ since 2020 (ZAC Amphitheatre), and of the MEETT in Toulouse since 2022 (ZAC du MEETT). After studying architecture at the AA school of architecture in London, the Chulalongkorn Mahawitthayalai Architectural School in Bangkok and at the University of Illinois in Chicago, he graduated with high honors from the Architectural school of Versailles.