The 2014 November Talks in Belleville
Since it was set up in 2005, the Sto Foundation has been contributing towards the personal development and training of young people, whether they are students of architecture or have chosen to follow a career in the building trades. It also supports adults when they want to retrain as professional painters. The Foundation also supports a great variety of projects aimed at raising awareness of environmental matters and reducing inequality, for example by funding projects to build schools in developing countries. The support of research and development projects also falls within the scope of the Sto Foundation, allowing future engineers in particular to work on the future of facade coatings, to mention just one example.
The November Talks, known in German as the “Novemberreihen”, are one of the flagship projects financed and promoted since 2006. They allow architecture students and enthusiasts to attend lectures given by famous architects free-of-charge. They traditionally take place in November, and are now held in Stuttgart, Milan, Graz and in the École Nationale Supérieure d’Architecture (Ensa) of Paris-Belleville.
Founded in 1969, based on an important project culture, the Paris-Belleville Ensa wants to be a school that is open to the world, training constructive and critical architects who will be prepared for the evolution of the trades and the diverse ways of practicing them. It favours the architectural project as it represents 50 % of teaching and thus seeks to create links between pedagogic and scientific projects. The school has chosen a progressive mode of training in which the associated disciplines are run in parallel and with building construction and history being obligatory throughout the course. It therefore offers many possible post-graduate paths, and remains an open school, offering numerous exchanges and workshops.
As regards the talks in Paris, the first edition in 2013 had the honour of being set up and hosted by the prestigious Paris-Belleville Ensa. The participating architects, Dietmar Feichinger, DFA Paris agency, followed by Helmut Dietrich, of the Austrian agency Dietrich I Untertrifaller - Architekten ZT GmbH in Bregenz offered shining lectures, completely in line with what drives the Foundation and the partner schools from around the world.
Paris-Belleville Ensa and the Sto Foundation continue their partnership in 2014, still on the subject of materiality in contemporary architecture, through a new series of conferences:
Sunday 6th november 2014 : Sara de Giles & José MORALES, MGM architectos, Morales, de Giles, Mariscal, Séville
Sunday 13th november 2014 : Pilar CALDERON, Agence Calderon, Folch, Sarsanedas, Barcelone
Sunday 20th november 2014 : Ricardo BAK GORDON, Lisbonne
Sunday 27th november 2014 : Tony FRETTON, Londres
