Architect Nichola Barrington-Leach introduces her exhibition exploring Renée Gailhoustet’s pioneering Parisian social housing projects.

The celebrated French architect Renée Gailhoustet (1929–2023) created pioneering masterplans and social housing projects in the Parisian suburbs. Rejecting rigid typologies and modernist ideals of uniformity and standardisation, she designed collective yet noble and bespoke housing that featured a characteristic generosity of space and use of raised terraces. In the words of the former French Minister of Culture Rima Abdul Malak, Gailhoustet’s architecture offers ‘a thousand and one ways of inhabiting our world’.

In this talk, Nichola Barrington-Leach discusses her research into Gailhoustet’s work whilst living on-site at one of her housing projects during a Royal Academy of Arts 2023 Residency. She explores how the research was translated into an exhibition at the Architectural Association in London and now on display at the Farrell Centre and how these projects invite us to consider how Gailhoustet’s ambitious, generous and adaptable buildings created unique places to live, and embody principles for designing and living that we can learn from today.

Renée Gailhoustet book

The event will include an opportunity to purchase Barrington-Leach’s book on Renée Gailhoustet published by the Architectural Association. Find out more

Photo by Philip Dale Nogare.

Description supplied by the event organiser.