EXYZT

Collective established 2003 in Paris.

Founded by five architects, EXYZT’s manifesto proclaims it as a ‘platform for multidisciplinary creation’ whose aim is to challenge the view of architecture as an independent field of practice. Instead, they embark on experimental ventures expressed through a wide variety of devices, including architecture, video, cooking, graphic design and botany. The collective ‘conceive and organise each project as a playground in which cultural behaviours and shared stories relate, mix and mingle’. Their projects, which could be defined as participatory architecture, always strive to involve different constituencies of the local community in a social network that is invited to inhabit a temporary space.

In 2003 EXYZT created Architecture du RAB, their first project of ‘architectural piracy’, as they refer to it, occupying a 335-metre-square abandoned plot near Parc de la Villette in Paris. The group lived on the site for five weeks, occupying a temporary structure they had built. The structure was designed as an enormous architectural game, a steel frame whose sections could be removed or added, yet using the same volume of materials for the various configurations. During the period of occupation the space housed a fleeting community, a centre for collective actions by artists and local inhabitants. Activities included the making of a film, a body painting workshop, weekly neighbourhood meals and even a public trial.

LabiChampi, 2007, took place in the former Soviet military district of Karosta in Latvia. Abandoned by the Soviets in 1991 (the year in which Latvia achieved independence) the area quickly became ridden with crime and unemployment. EXYZT’s project for the site took the form of a micro urban farm providing the neighbourhood with an alternative resource, both in terms of local food production and potential income.