Studios Murs à Pêches

Studios Murs à Pêches

Participation at the Festival des Murs à Pêches in Montreuil
6-8 June 2025.
Presentation of the student projects and publication release
7 June 2025, 14:30

The Murs à Pêches is a former fruit-growing area in Montreuil in the banlieue of Paris. From the second half of the 19th century until the 1930s, peaches in particular were grown there - most of the time as the sole supplier for the Parisian market. The cultivation of the frost-sensitive peach trees was made possible by the construction of fruit walls – the so-called Murs à Pêches.

The Murs à Pêches, only parts of which have survived to this day, are both a garden monument as well as an industrial ruin. In the remaining network of fruit walls, there are protected open spaces and gardens, (informal) residential uses, industry, agricultural land, waste disposal areas, contaminated groundwater ... and an unusually large number of citizens' initiatives and associations, which produce an equally large number of projects and events, such as two annual festivals, school gardens, theater programs, etc.

The labyrinthine character of the areas enclosed by the fruit walls and their clandestine connections not only does not seem to stand in the way of this specific form of public life, but also seems to be its prerequisite.

The architectural studios Murs à Pêches examined the qualities and development possibilities of this heterotopia - both in the sense of a typological of the “proto-architecture” of the fruit walls, as well as in terms of their significance for a regional circular economy and food production.

Our gratitude goes to the citizen associations of Murs à Pêches, especially to: Pascal Mage and Eurydice Adrien of MAP; masons Charly Roseau and Louis Laporte-Daube of Les Pierres de Montreuil; Isabelle Faugeras, Diana Tempia, Emilio Tempia of Fruits défendus; Christoph Bichon of the Sens de l’Humus; special thanks to Daria Horsch - Projets urbains du bas Montreuil Mission Patrimoine of the Municipality of Montreuil; Françoise Fromonot, professor at Ecole Nationale Supérieure d’Architecture de Paris-Belville; Valentin Cochard of Supérette Rayon; Antoine Jacobsohn of Potager du Roi in Versailles; Daniel Inacio, Hotel de Beauvais - Cour Administrative d’Appel de Paris.

A cooperation between:

Munich University of Applied Sciences, Department of Architecture,prof. Sandra Bartoli, lecturer Nina Zerbs & Technical University Berlin, Institute for Architecture, FG Gebäudekunde und Entwerfen, prof. Silvan Linden, research ass. Zorica Medo, tutor Sarah Silbernagel.

HM MA students: Rajaee Abugharbieh, Oznur Baskaya, Hamz Dar, Meltem Demirkaynak, Lina Dopfer, Laura Ellmann, Luisa Hoelzl, Ivana Ivanova, Feyza Kizilkaya, Emma Kohler, Lara Metz, Lisa Moloney, Lorenz Oberhammer, Isabella Pineda, Noah Puhl, Lilli Swoboda, Roxana Wenner, Paula Zoller, Zaira Carbajal.

TU Berlin MA students: Clemens Braumann, Takumi Kondo, Julius Morgenstern, Leonard Ruchholtz, Selina Sommer, Peter Teller, Laura Waclawek.

TU Berlin BA students: Richard Fabricius Bohlinger, José Lourenco Etzler e Casimiro, Kyana Crnovrsanin, Delphine Douglas, Malte Ben Hanisch, Eva Lotta Heinemann, Luisa Lina Wiezcorek, Lennart Knospe, Sina Schaper, Mads Maj-Saelzer, Victor Neubert, Palina Sarokina, Ann-Sophie Schedl.