"What does space do to us? The anthropologist and the space turn", edited by Ferdinando Fava
Book cover – © Éditions Boa
This collective work, prepared by Ferdinando Fava (1960-2025), a member of the LAA UMR LAVUE 7218 research unit at ENSA Paris-la Villette, has just been published posthumously in the DÉCRIRE collection by Éditions Boa.
What does space do to us? It welcomes us, confuses us, transforms us.
This book brings together a plurality of voices to show that space is never a mere décor: it shapes our relationships, our practices and our imaginations, just as much as we shape it in return. Ferdinando Fava, initiator and scientific coordinator of this collective work, invites us to explore what space does to its inhabitants, and how ethnography can understand urban transformation.
Step by step, encounter by encounter, the Spatial Turn becomes an ethnographic gaze, revealing how space is constructed in a constant tension between actors, temporalities, desires and fears. From the streets of Barcelona to the suburbs of Naples, from the undesirable spaces of the Goutte-d’Or to the inhabitants deemed undesirable in Montreuil and Bagnolet, the texts plunge us into the heart of cities criss-crossed by contradictions and permanent negotiations, and demonstrate the power of an attentive analysis of what space does to us, from everyday micro-gestures to major urban projects.
News
Reprint: "Persian Gardens" by Gaëtane Lamarche-Vadel, Éditions de la Villette
Far from orientalist fantasies, identity essentialisations or tourist stereotypes, this book, which was awarded the Prix de l’Essai Émile Gallé in 2025, restores Persian gardens to their present-day reality, their multiple uses, their relationship with the elements and traces the complexity of their cultural roots.
Bookstore release: "Mai 68. Parole à l'architecture", Éditions de la Villette
The book brings together some thirty interviews with key figures from this historic turning point, including Jean-Louis Cohen, François Very, Bernard Huet, Roland Castro, Henri Ciriani, Monique Eleb and Jacques Lucan… Curated by Caroline Maniaque, Éléonore Marantz and Jean-Louis Violeau, who also curated the exhibition “Mai 68. L’Architecture aussi!” exhibition at the Cité de l’architecture et du patrimoine in summer 2018, the book restores the kaleidoscopic words of this “generation” and puts them into historical perspective.
Toyō Itō's inner landscapes
While in March, ENSAPLV celebrated several decades of educational, scientific and human relations for a week in the presence of a delegation from its Japanese partner universities, the month of April is marked by the publication of this collective work by Maki Onishi, Toyō Itō, Benoît Jacquet and Yann Nussaume in the “Paysage et Architecture” collection from éditions Arléa.
Making visible. Values of ordinary things
Just published in Éditions Boa’s DÉCRIRE collection, this collective work is edited byAlessia de Biase, architect-urban planner, HDR professor in SHS at ENSA Paris-la Villette and director of the LAA-LAVUE research unit, and Emilie Pillon, architect, doctoral student in anthropology at LAA-LAVUE.
As with the other volumes in the collection, one or other artist is involved in a dialogue with the theme of the book: photographer and video artist Valérie Jouve contributed to this work, alongside Catherine Deschamps & Pascale Absi, Philippe Bonnin, Chloé Gaspari, Federica Gatta, Flavia Pertuso & Étienne Kretzschmar, Nadja Monnet & the Momkin association, Mina Saidi Shahrouz, Maud Santini, Anne-Claire Vallet and Valeria Volpe.
"Ça dépend" by Jeremy Till, Éditions de la Villette
Finally available in French, this classic of contemporary architectural theory opens a definitive breach in architects’ belief in the autonomy of their discipline.
"Dieu & Cie", a monograph devoted to François Dallegret published by Éditions de la Villette
This monograph – the first in French – traces the work of François Dalleret (b. Morocco, 1937) over five decades, a prolific and unclassifiable creator at the crossroads of the visual arts, performance art, radical architecture, graphic and industrial design.