Renée Gailhoustet: A Thousand and One Ways of Living

An exhibition by architect Nichola Barrington-Leach exploring French architect Renée Gailhoustet’s pioneering Parisian social housing projects.

The celebrated French architect Renée Gailhoustet (1929–2023) created pioneering masterplans and social housing projects in the Parisian suburbs. Rejecting rigid typologies and modernist ideals of uniformity and standardisation, she designed collective yet noble and bespoke housing that featured a characteristic generosity of space and use of raised terraces. In the words of the former French Minister of Culture Rima Abdul Malak, Gailhoustet’s architecture offers ‘a thousand and one ways of inhabiting our world’.

Building on work completed during the Royal Academy of Arts 2023 Residency, architect Nichola Barrington-Leach reflects on Gailhoustet’s work in a 1:1 scale installation of an apartment floor plan from Gailhoustet’s Le Liégat housing project in Ivry-sur-Seine. Originally on display at the Architectural Association in London, the exhibition brings together work by NVBL, including additional drawings, spatial study models and photographs. Together, they invite us to consider how Gailhoustet’s ambitious, generous and adaptable buildings created unique places to live, and embody principles for designing and living that we can learn from today.

Biographies

Renée Gailhoustet (1929–2023) dedicated her career to creating social housing in Paris’ suburbs, developing projects such as Ivry-sur-Seine, îlot Basilique Saint Denis and La Maladrerie. She lived and worked in Le Liégat, in Ivry-sur-Seine, for over 40 years. Born in Algeria, she moved to Paris to study philosophy but eventually chose to study architecture at the École des Beaux-Arts. She was chief architect of Ivry-sur-Seine, working closely with Raymonde Laluque, director of the Office for Social Housing and Urbanism. In her lifetime she built over 1500 homes.

Nichola Barrington-Leach is an architect, educator and the founder of NVBL Architects, a practice focused on environmentally conscious design and research. She was awarded the Royal Academy of Arts Renée Gailhoustet Residency in 2023, and her ongoing research on Gailhoustet was presented in an exhibition and lecture at the RA followed by an installation at the AA. She is the editor of a monograph on her work, published by AA Publications in 2026. She currently teaches at the AA and the RCA.

Curators: Nichola Barrington-Leach and Harriet Jennings (Public Programme and Exhibitions Curator, AA)
Assistant Curator: Molly Evans (Public Programme and Exhibitions Assistant Curator, AA)
Exhibition Design and Production: NVBL Architects
Photography: Valérie Sadoun and Sacha Trouiller
Graphic Design: Caspar Bailey
Copyediting: Anna Lisa Reynolds and Max Zarzycki

The Farrell Centre would like to thank Nichola Barrington-Leach and Harriet Jennings and Molly Evans at the AA for helping to make the restaging of the exhibition possible.

Image credit: Le Liégat, Ivry-sur-Seine, Sacha Trouiller / NVBL Architects