YEAH!

About YEAH!
Festival, congress, conference: YEAH! Young European Architecture Happening gathers an unestablished and/or upcoming generation of architects, makers and thinkers of the built environment on the European scale, in order to exchange and share ideas, visions and experiences with the larger public in a casual setting.

YEAH! is an initiative curated by Philippe Nathan—2001 (Luxembourg), and Gianpiero Venturini—Itinerant Office (Spain) as part of Esch-sur-Alzette European Capital of Culture 2022. Within this context, YEAH! will take place from April 15–17, 2022 at the Kulturfabrik, a non-profit cultural space supported by Luxembourg Ministry of Culture and the City of Esch-sur-Alzette.

Programme
The YEAH! festival programme will involve 50+ European emerging studios based on a curated selection of participants who, through their work, have presented innovative and unique responses to the two central themes of the festival: HABITATS and HYBRIDS. The festival aims to create an active dialogue between the participants and the public, through a variety of public activities and event formats such as OTTO, XCHANGE, and other events such as debates and interviews throughout the three days of the festival.

OTTO
The OTTO event will take place in two separate sessions: HABITATS and HYBRIDS. Each session consists of a round of 8-minute presentations with the participation of 15 international guests, each presenting one built project realised within the last decade.

April 15, 7:30–10pm: OTTO Habitats
This session will present compelling examples of housing and domestic architecture such as Avala House, a case study on how design can turn sufficiency into a desirable form for living, by TEN Studio. The event will also see a diverse range of projects from collective housing such as La Borda by Barcelona-based LACOL collective as a prime example of self-organised, non-speculative housing, to industrial renovations such as La Nave that focus on simple materials and enhancing local craftsmanship, by the multinational studio, NOMOS architects. The event will be moderated and presented by Chris Luth.

April 16, 7:30–10pm: OTTO Habitats
A round of 15 presentations, a collection of innovative approaches to citymaking such as the Azatlyk Square, a renovation project that intended to strip a public space of its ideological underpinning, by Rotterdam-based studio, DROM. Also to be presented are large-scale urban catalysts and city machines that have a unique influence over the city’s fabric such as New Aarch, an architecture school project located at a former rail yard by the Danish studio, ADEPT, and Estación San Jose, a flexible, mixed-use infrastructure in the city centre of Toluca de Lerdo, Mexico, by the Spanish practice FRPO. This session will be moderated and presented by Roxanne Le Grelle.

XCHANGE
XCHANGE is an event format that relies on debate and discussion in order to investigate and better perceive the culture and art developing around architectural projects. The event is conceived as three distinct discussion panels, each bringing together experts in the respective fields of architectural communication and cultural production: Drawing, Photography and Publishing.

Throughout the course of the festival, a number of supplementary events will also allow the public to engage with the festival in a variety of formats such as the OTTO Recap Breakfast Club with the moderators of the two OTTO sessions, Chris Luth and Roxane Le Grelle in an open discussion format to explore the state of the art of emerging architecture in Europe (April 17th, 11:00 | 12:30). Within the XCHANGE session, a final panel titled New realities in architecture: let’s talk money! will be presented and moderated by Kontextur (April 17th, 09:30 | 11:00).