ABOUT 4°C

The « 4 ° Celsius entre toi et moi » (4° Celsius between you and me) exhibition, part of the3rd Biennale d’Architecture et de Paysage d’Île-de-France /BAP! at the École Nationale Supérieure d’Architecture de Versailles from May 7 to July 13, 2025, is curated by architects Sana Frini, of the Mexican firm LOCUS, and Philippe Rahm, of the French firm PHILIPPE RAHM ARCHITECTES.

The exhibition starts from the conclusion, officially announced in 2023 by former French Minister of Ecological Transition Christophe Béchu, that temperatures in France will rise by +4°C by 2100. With global warming, the currently temperate climate of Paris (and other cities at the same northern latitude) will become subtropical, with heatwaves and dry summers, and heavy rain in other seasons, corresponding to the current climate further south, experienced in Mexico, Tunisia and southern Europe.

The argument of the exhibition entitled “4 ° Celsius between you and me” is that architects working in the temperate climates of the north, such as Paris, must now look to the south, to these semi-arid, subtropical, Mediterranean, even arid and tropical climates, to find the models for the architecture and urban planning of the future. In order to build their future, they will have to draw inspiration from the architectural and landscaping solutions of subtropical climates with the aim of acquiring the know-how that will enable them to construct, transform and adapt buildings and cities in more northerly latitudes to this rise in temperatures. The urban landscape of temperate climates will thus become more “Mediterranean” and more “tropical” during the 21st century, transforming the aesthetics of buildings and cities.

The exhibition proposes to look at these southern models already designed to withstand the heat of this new climate by presenting architectures from before the age of fossil fuels, those of contemporary architects and finally projections for 2100 imagined by architects, architecture critics, historians and philosophers.

SANA FRINI

Tunisian architect based in Mexico City and co-founder of LOCUS (Mexico). Her work focuses on architectural methods of the global South, such as participatory processes, artisanal systems, post-vernacular, local reintegration and climate resilience. With LOCUS, Sana Frini has recently completed several contextual regeneration projects, including Mexico’s first low-carbon public building, Latin America’s first zero-waste restaurant and the continent’s first climate-resilient prison. She was also selected to co-curate the Biennale d’architecture et de paysage d’Île-de-France 2025 (bap! 25) and to be part of the Mexican pavilion team at the Venice Biennale 2025. She has taught at international universities such as Cornell University, Columbus and Kent University.

PHILIPPE RAHM

Swiss architect with a degree from the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne and a doctorate from the Université Paris-Saclay, whose practice Philippe Rahm architectes is based in Paris. His projects include Taichung Central Park in Taiwan, inaugurated in 2020 (with Mosbach paysagistes). In 2023, he published Histoire naturelle de l’architecture, Climatic architecture and The Anthropocene Style. He has taught at Harvard, Princeton, Columbia, HEAD – Geneva and ENSA Versailles. He has participated in numerous biennials, including those in Venice (2025), Tbilisi (2024), Madrid (2024), Chicago (2023) and Tallinn (2022). In 2025, he will curate the biennales of Île-de-France and Saint-Étienne. He is a knight of the Monaco Order of Cultural Merit and has been awarded the Silver Medal of the French Academy of Architecture.

CURATORIAL TEAM

[GENERAL COMMISSIONER OF THE BAP]
François de Mazières

[CURATOR]
Sana Frini
Philippe Rahm

[CURATORIAL TEAM]
Arlette Plata, Aya Sellami, Inés Gárate Marín, Jachen Schleich, Javiera Elicer, José Silva, Lucia Pells, Mariana Lopez Pulido, Lucien Rahm, Monica Arellano, Muriel Maggiol, Noë Renaudineau, Raphaël Fenoglio, Rodrigo Huesca, Santiago Sitten.

[GRAPHIC COORDINATION AND GRAPHIC DESIGN]
Estudio Herrera, Mexico City
Maricris Herrera
Israel Hernández, Marianna Pasaret, Diego Pereyra,
Gabriela Quezada, Mirelle Rodríguez

PRESS

CATALOGS

Accompanying the exhibition 4° Celsius entre toi et moi”, at the third Île-de-France Architecture and Landscape Biennial, two books are being published for the occasion:

“4° Celsius entre toi et moi” is the bilingual French and English catalogue of the exhibition of the 3rd Île-de-France Architecture and Landscape Biennial, 2025, curated by Sana Frini and Philippe Rahm, published by ACTAR in Barcelona and designed by Mexican graphic design firm Estudio Herrera. The catalog explores urban and architectural strategies in latitudes with climates that are already warm, as a model for building tomorrow in latitudes further north that are warming up. 120 vernacular buildings from before air conditioning were climatically analyzed by a dozen universities around the world. 58 contemporary architects presented their projects built in the already warm regions of the planet, and a dozen architectural critics were invited to reflect on the aesthetic and social transformation of cities with global warming.
(To order from : ACTAR)

“4 Degrés Celsius entre toi et moi” is a book of unpublished literature published in French in paperback by Éditions POINTS in Paris, France, where in ten unpublished short stories, ten French-speaking writers put climate at the heart of fiction, namely Aurélien Bellanger, Marie Darrieussecq, Célia Houdart, Annie Lulu, Marielle Macé, Yamen Manaï, Samy Manga, Ryoko Sekiguchi, Peter Stamm, Abdourahman Waberi, under the editorial direction of Jean-Max Colard, Sana Frini, Philippe Rahm and Dominic Thomas.
(To order from : Editionspoints )