The International Workshop of Built Architecture (AIAC) was created to develop a pedagogy of architecture teaching taking into account the requirements of the matter. It is the Built Architecture understood as a continuation of the lineages of Eupalinos, Pierre de Meaux or Brunelleschi.

This is a friendly competition where teachers and students want to progress «together» (INSIEME) with the advantage of mobilizing students to make the best possible project, and the consecration of a Prize or Mention which will be useful for entering professional life or requesting the possibility of continuing studies in foreign schools.

The principle of this competition is to have students design a common project (program and site) and compare the results. These projects are integrated into the curriculum of the schools. In France, it is the end-of-studies projects (PFE) that give the title “State Architect” and are presented at the beginning of July. Students continue and refine their projects for the Price of September.

This competition is an opportunity on the one hand to check by comparing the level of knowledge of students from different institutions, around the joint work of a semester, and on the other hand to create a strong structure of international cooperation, to promote the adaptability of future architects to different international contexts.

Teachers from different countries, themselves professionals, decided to work together to:

• To promote architectural design integrating the contributions of technology.
• To calibrate the respective knowledge of architecture students at the end of studies in different countries.
• To guide the lessons according to the projects presented and amend them in order to optimize them.

All the teams meet on the competition site at the beginning of March. Then each team goes back to design its project. Then the schools meet again in September. The projects are then presented and judged, a prize is awarded. The projects are on the one hand the subject of a travelling exhibition and were presented, in particular, at the Venice Biennale in 2008, and on the other hand, of a work that perpetuates the memory of this work and allows its media coverage.

It’s a friendly competition where everyone moves forward together. The challenge is to learn from everyone by giving the best of your own knowledge. The International Workshop Prize thus opens students’ eyes to other practices, cultures and professional opportunities.

The members of the International Jury are professors from schools and universities, internationally renowned architects (Nicholas Grimshaw, Otto Steidle, Ottavio di Blasi, Zui Kai, Ian Ritchie ….), political or administrative or industrial leaders (The Mayor of Auch, the Mayor of Venice, the Inspector General Director of the MRAI, etc.). They argue and base their deliberations on the potential of each team according to the project submitted to design an original project capable of integrating and assimilating contemporary environmental techniques as tools of architectural design. In order to assess the quality of the projects, it is necessary to calibrate them, to discern the excellences … and failures compared to the work of other schools.

The projects presented to the communities, subjects of the Competition, allow them to have a remarkable enrichment of their reflections for the future development of the site studied.

This workshop includes several questions:

How can we return to the notion that the architect’s work results in a built work – that he must integrate the constraints of the material?

Design the architecture from available manufactured materials and techniques benefiting from the technical knowledge of the industry.

How to integrate the notion of the scalability of the built – a «less immobile real estate»?

Design a pole system – steel beam … which involves the use of flat steel products in floors and casing (facade + cover), transformable.    

How to reduce the arduousness on the construction site?

Making the site clean (without water) and materials less heavy.  

How to integrate the basic environmental concepts: energy saving, water saving, recyclable materials, acoustic comfort?

Energy saving by the systematic use of insulators, dry assembly system, recyclable materials (steel) mass-spring-mass effect. This question which concerns the way to conceive from a reflection on contemporary requirements was also linked to pedagogical concerns.

How to teach DALICS (Dry and Light Interactive Composite Systems) as a tool of an «other» Architecture?

It is about establishing the basis of an architectural and technical knowledge of international level. Earthquakes, wind disorders, the disappearance or absence of water, frost for several months of the year, the difficulty of implementation under bad weather, waste management are universal problems that allow technical and architectural solutions to be developed worldwide.