Le Étoiles

Les Étoiles
Lecture by Françoise Fromonot

Les Étoiles (“The Stars”) in Ivry-sur-Seine, 5km south-east from Paris center, is an enigmatic rising conglomerate of buildings, a mountain range of acute angles and crystal-like terraces, leafy cascades of cultivated and spontaneous plants, an intricate system of plazas, a pedestrian public circulation as articulate as corals. The three buildings named Les Étoiles were designed in the 1970s by the architects Jean Renaudie and Renée Gailhoustet and they are part of an ambitious 105 hectares of estate that includes 10 buildings, the entire urban project launched by the municipality in the late 1950s was overseen by Gailhoustet. The studio will focus on this large project that refuses a programmatic separation as the entire compound includes an articulate spatial scheme of housing (38% of which is social housing), offices, public and commercial facilities, creating not only a rich and complex urban life but also the ground for a lush vegetation that enforces the social, ecological, and microclimatic quality of this place. The studio was organized around an initial cartographic site exploration during an excursion to Paris and Ivry-sur-Seine, guided by architects Francoise Fromonot, Serge Renaudie and Iwona Buczkowska. The architectural project and program resulted from the understanding of this specific site and the question of how to learn from and contribute in a form of experimental “Weiterbauen” to the ecology of The Stars of Paris.

The lecture by Françoise Fromonot presents examples of design studios she taught based on a methodology that departs from an exact cartographic work of the site to develop a level of project exactitude that operates at an array of multiple scales – it becomes the encyclopedic project.

Françoise Fromonot is an architecture critic, professor at the school of architecture of Paris-Belleville and adjunct professor for Rice School of Architecture. Her extensive writings include monographs on Glenn Murcutt, Jørn Utzon and Marc Mimram. Fromonot was an editor of l’Architecture d’Aujourd’hui (1994-1998), co-editor in chief of the journal le Visiteur (1999-2003) and, a founding member of Criticat. She recently published her compelling book The House of Doctor Koolhaas (Park Books, 2025).

Prof. Sandra Bartoli, Prof. Björn Martenson
Munich University of Applied Sciences
Department of Architecture