About this issue
a+u's April 2026 issue turns to BAST — Bureau Architectures Sans Titre — a Toulouse practice structured as a worker-owned cooperative. Laurent Didier, Mathieu Le Ny and Louis Léger have built the studio around a research-based method that refuses a signature style: rather than imposing a single vision across the board, each project is worked out from site-specific decisions and structural logic.
The eighteen projects gathered here are mostly modest in programme — houses, apartments, collective housing, public and tertiary spaces. In refurbishments such as M47 and E53, BAST carves out new room while leaving the integrity of the local vernacular building intact. New builds like M37 propose fresh ways of meeting the site. What distinguishes the issue is where it puts its attention: not only on the finished building but on the dynamism of the construction site itself, where calibrations between human, site and material are continually renegotiated.
Key features
- Monographic issue on BAST, one of the most closely watched practices working in south-west France
- Eighteen projects presented across houses, apartments, collective housing, public and tertiary space
- Essay on building practice by Adrien Comte and Adrien Meuwly
- Conversation between BAST and Guillermo Fernández-Abascal
- Workshop section on teaching experiences (O04 / W04)
What you'll discover
- How a worker-owned cooperative structure shapes architectural method
- Refurbishment as a way of adding without erasing the vernacular
- The construction site treated as a site of design decisions, not just execution
- Drawings, plans and details across eighteen built works
About a+u
First published in January 1971, a+u (Architecture and Urbanism) is Japan's only monthly periodical dedicated to architecture from around the world. Published in Tokyo by Shinkenchiku-sha in parallel Japanese and English text, it reports directly on practices across more than 100 countries, with each issue edited from a distinct critical position.
Specifications
- Format: Softcover
- Dimensions: 219 x 292 mm
- Pages: 160
- Language: English and Japanese
- JAN: 4912019730464
- Publisher: Shinkenchiku-sha
- Publication date: 27 March 2026
Perfect for
Readers following contemporary European practice, architects interested in cooperative and non-hierarchical studio models, and anyone drawn to building as a material and site-bound process.