Stimulation

You are cordially invited to attend the lecture by François Decoster:

Date: 23 April 2026
Time: 4.30-5.30pm (45 minutes presentation + Q&A session)
Location: SDE4 Forum, Level 5

Stimulation

In 2009, l’AUC published Greater Paris Stimulated, From the Inherited Metropolis to Contemporary Parisian Situations. The book followed an intensive consultation process that had been launched by the French government the previous year, inviting ten international architecture and urbanism offices to develop proposals for the 21st Century Metropolis in the After Kyoto (ie. the Kyoto Protocol, first attempt by the UN to commit industrialized countries and economies to limit and reduce greenhouse gases emissions) and for the future of the Parisian agglomeration.

For l’AUC, this has been a foundational experience from which emerged a new look at how our metropolises could each find their own ways towards sustainable futures not by imposing new plans or universal ideal solutions but through the acknowledgement of what is already there. Beyond mass planning and new cities, the stimulation of the déjà-là opens endless possibilities, new directions and perspectives for urban intensification, transformation and regeneration.

Bio

François Decoster is a French architect and urbanist, graduate from the Versailles School of Architecture and the Paris Institute of Political Sciences. In 1996, with Djamel Klouche and Caroline Poulin, he founded l’AUC, an architecture and urbanism office based in Paris, acting in France and internationally. l’AUC was awarded the Grand Prix National de l’Urbanisme by the French Ministry of Urban Development and Housing in 2021 and the Patrick Abercrombie Prize for architecture and urbanism by the International Union of Architects in 2023. l’AUC is a supporting practice of the House Europe network.

François Decoster teaches urbanism and urban design at NUS / CDE / DOA / Master of Urban Design since 2003. He regularly contributes in conferences and workshops related to planning, urban design and urbanism. He is currently involved in various projects dealing with complex issues of metropolisation, urban and architectural transformation, regeneration, environment and public space.