In 2026, the Festival des Architectures Vives (FAV) in Montpellier enters a new era: its twentieth anniversary. For this anniversary edition, the organizers have chosen to place transmission at the heart of the theme, a notion as ancient as it is universal.
To transmit is to create a living link between the giver and the receiver, between the hands that shape and the minds that imagine. FAV 2026 embraces this definition in all its richness. By celebrating transmission, the festival pays tribute to this "thread woven from trust, listening, and transformation" that runs through generations of architects, craftspeople, builders, and thinkers. A collective adventure.
For this edition, twelve teams from France, Italy, Portugal, Japan, South Korea and Canada are taking over the Montpellier courtyards with installations as diverse as they are inventive. Here's an overview.
PANCAKE OF LIGHT
A+ workshops: Bancarel, Felipe, Thibaut, Le Joly, Lauras, Guiraud – Montpellier, France
In a courtyard hidden behind a large red door, suspended colorful elements create a play of light in motion. With the wind and the movements of visitors, the colors change, overlap, and constantly transform the space.
The installation plays on something very simple: light, color, and perspective. Nothing is fixed; everything depends on where you stand and how you move through the courtyard. A joyful transmission of light in all its richness.
THE RECOVERED ORNAMENT
Amandine Courtaillac and Guillaume Debeze – Montpellier, France
Three white models, archetypes of the modern building, are placed in the center of the Baschy-du-Cayla hotel.
Visitors are invited to create facades using a multitude of golden fragments, thus rediscovering the keys to understanding the decorative language of Montpellier's private mansions. What seemed mute takes shape in their hands.
HOURGLASS
Nou(e)s Collective: Neuville, Soleilhac, Guyot, Lamy – Rodez / Paris / Clermont-Ferrand / Lyon, France
A vertical form rises like a monument, designed to last and dominate the space. But its fragile construction contradicts this impression of solidity.
The project plays on this contrast: something that looks like a stable, almost imposing architecture, but which in reality reveals its vulnerability.
Beyond the form, the installation invites us to reflect on how we build today: the impact of materials, the consumption of resources, and the idea that perhaps we should build less, but better, taking more care of what already exists.
TELL ME A SECRET
Coletivo 624: Filipe, Varão Moreira, Van-Zeller, Rosendo, Vasques, Stattmiller – Portugal / Switzerland / France
An interactive sound installation where visitors can record an anonymous secret on one side of a walk-through structure, and listen to others' secrets on the other. Private emotions transformed into a collective and evolving soundscape, exploring trust and emotional exchange in public space.
TRANSPHERES
Mousqueton Workshop: Delphine Lecomte and Valentine Geoffroy – Bordeaux, France
Spheres suspended from a structure form a moving whole. The installation changes as soon as visitors interact with it, as if the space were reacting to their presence.
The installation references Newton's cradle: each contact triggers a reaction that propagates from one point to another. The movement circulates, is transmitted, passes from one element to another, then from one person to the next.
The experience is both playful and immersive. The visitor does not just look at the artwork: they make it work, and take part in the system themselves.
THE LYRE AND THE CROWN
Esteban Le Magnen – Paris, France
A circular wooden pavilion creates a separate space, slightly set back from the rest of the route. The entrance is marked by a slightly raised floor, like a threshold to be crossed.
Inside, you can sit, stand, chat, or simply do nothing. The space dictates nothing; it lets time stand still.
Light enters from above, at the center of the structure, drawing the eye upward to a block of stone placed at the heart of the installation. The entire space is organized around this central point, which is both simple and silent.
A gathering place that gives shape to the notion of transmission.
Cloud Paper
OFNN Group: Sungmin Park and Sanghoon Park – Seoul, South Korea
Inspired by the traditional Korean art of papermaking (Hanji), a suspended roof of mulberry pulp poured onto a metal mesh filters the Mediterranean sun. The uneven thickness creates a living filigree.
Twenty paper chimes (for the festival's 20th anniversary) convey the invisible air. Designed to disappear without a trace: the pulp returns to nature, the metal is reused.
VERTIGE
A+ workshops: Le Letty, Richez, Mazouz, Rousset, Corsig, Lagarde – Montpellier, France
A visual shock that stops you in your tracks. Through their ephemeral installation, composed of a wooden plank and a hollow trompe l'oeil, the body moves forward to regain its balance.
But the abyss dissipates; it is not real. We understand that vertigo is merely a point of view. To transmit vertigo is not to spread fear, but the ability to overcome it.
MATERIALS
Calada Architectes & Atelier Moschata: Dalloni, Artières, Contesso – Nice, France
Three pillars of stone, metal and wood, designed exclusively from scraps recovered from a marble works, an ironworks and a carpentry shop, fragments destined for the skip, erected as an architectural manifesto.
Through the raw layering of materials, the architects reveal textures and contrasts, thus making reuse an act of transmission.
Calada Architects
Moscata Workshop
THE CONTINUUM AS SPACE AND TIME
Charles-Antoine Lauzon and Marie-Laurence Durand – Quebec, Canada
An installation that conveys to visitors the fundamental experience of the architect: the ability to distort reality.
As visitors move around, their perception of the space changes between two reflective surfaces. The courtyard remains physically enclosed, but the perceived space seems to unfold like a boundless universe.
Charles-Antoine Lauzon
https://www.charlesantoinelauzon.ca/projets
LIMINALITY IN MOTION
Yurica Design & Architecture: Yurika Takemura – Nara, Japan
A space in which normally invisible boundaries become perceptible and are subtly destabilized. To shift perception towards relationship.
Boundaries: between oneself and others, within the self, become active mediations rather than separations.
TEATER
Laetitia Rejany and Iacha Perget – Montpellier, France
Here, the courtyard of the Hôtel Saint-Côme is transformed into a weaving device. The columns of the place become structures that guide an interlacing of blue threads stretched in space.
Two volumes interact: one plays with light through suspended threads, the other, composed of denim scraps, gives a more material form to the weaving. Thus, we move from line to textile, from design to substance.
The installation is not fixed: it continues to evolve over time. Visitors are invited to add their own touch by tying a strap, directly participating in the construction of the whole.
Beyond the twelve selected installations, FAV 2026 brings together a total of 40 exhibiting architects who take over the city's courtyards with their projects, offering a rich panorama of contemporary architectural creation.
For this anniversary edition, the festival has also partnered with eleven mentors: all architects whose installations have made a significant impact on previous editions. They, in turn, pass on their experience to the younger teams. A virtuous circle, true to the spirit of the theme: the transmission of knowledge doesn't stop at the exhibited work; it also takes place behind the scenes, in the exchanges between generations of creators.
Festival of Living Architectures 2026
Location: Courtyard of a private mansion, Montpellier
Theme: Transmission Edition: 20th Anniversary
