“We live in space”: it is this (paradoxical and false) self-evidence that Georges Perec interrogates in “Species of Spaces” in 1974, at the request of Paul Virilio, who wished to launch his collection “L’espace critique” at Galilée with this title.

Halfway between an essay and prose poetry, Perec’s book takes a sharp and critical look at functionalism and architecture, questioning the ways we inhabit and think about spaces that are “multiplied, fragmented, and diversified.”

“Apartments are built by architects who have very specific ideas about what an entrance, a living room, a master bedroom, a child’s room, a maid’s room, a hallway, a kitchen, and a bathroom should be. And yet, initially, all rooms look more or less alike; there’s no need to try to impress us with talk of modules and other nonsense: they’re nothing more than cubes, or let’s say rectangular parallelepipeds…. I don’t know, and I don’t want to know, where functionalism begins or ends.”

It seems to us that fifty years after its publication, Georges Perec’s “Species of Spaces” has never been more relevant. Space is in doubt: between economic and ecological crises, tsunamis, massive wildfires, droughts, and epidemics, the beginning of this century has shifted societal, environmental, and consequently architectural stakes.

“I wish there were stable, immobile, intangible, untouchable, almost unreachable places, unchangeable, rooted; places that would be references, starting points, sources.

... But such places do not exist, and it is because they do not exist that space becomes a question, ceases to be self-evident, ceases to be embodied, ceases to be appropriated.
Space is a doubt: I must continually mark it, point it out; it is never mine, never given to me, I must conquer it.”

As a symbol of stability and permanence, the art of building must now contend with an unpredictable future. If the classical era was one of interpretation and the modern era one of prediction, the 21st century ushers in an age of indeterminacy. To transform this state of generalized uncertainty into a driving force for projects, it is essential to observe, describe, and understand a world that has become complex, heterogeneous, and contradictory.

On the occasion of the conference — originating from the exhibition of the same name, “Spaces Without Species” — LAN extends and reactivates the questions opened by the original project. Rather than presenting a fixed inventory of eleven spaces, the lecture reframes them as an open set of investigations.

These spaces stand at the crossroads of several typologies, climates, and uses. They are spaces of doubt, marked by opportunism and the uniqueness of their context. 
Each space is a fragment of a place, an invitation to redefine it, traverse it, reinvent it. These are meeting points where uncertainty converses with memory, where use hesitates, withdraws, or reinvents itself otherwise. 
All share the ambition of embodying potential responses to current transformations.

Eleven new species of spaces, or rather, eleven spaces without species.