The Biennale d'Architecture et de Paysage d'Île-de-France is the most significant architectural exhibition in France. For its third edition, Sana Frini, from the Mexican firm LOCUS, and Philippe Rahm, from the French firm PHILIPPE RAHM ARCHITECTES, have been selected as co-curators of the exhibition at the École Nationale Supérieure d'Architecture de Versailles. The exhibition will take place in the stables of the Château de Versailles from May 7 to July 13, 2025.
Titled Quatre degrés Celsius entre toi et moi, the exhibition is inspired by a 2023 statement from Christophe Béchu, France's former Minister of Ecological Transition, which projected that the country would experience a +4°C temperature rise by 2100. As climate change progresses, the currently temperate climate of Paris—and other cities at similar northern latitudes—will shift toward a subtropical climate. Summers will be hotter and drier, while winters will be milder but with heavier rainfall, resembling the present-day climates of southern Mexico, Tunisia, or South Korea.
According to Météo-France, by 2100, Paris will experience significant climatic shifts. Summers will see an average temperature increase of up to +5.3°C, with heatwave days rising sharply from the current average of one day per year to anywhere between 3 and 26 days annually, along with more frequent and intense droughts. Winters will become milder, with average temperatures rising by up to +3.9°C, leading to fewer frost periods. While the total volume of precipitation will increase, the number of rainy days is expected to remain largely unchanged.
The exhibition argues that architects and urban planners in traditionally temperate cities—such as Paris, New York, and London—must now turn their attention south. The urban and architectural strategies developed in subtropical, Mediterranean, arid, and tropical regions offer valuable solutions for mitigating the effects of heat, drought, intense rainfall, and flooding.
As temperate cities undergo a process of "Mediterraneanization" and "tropicalization", the transformation will extend beyond climate and infrastructure. It will trigger a profound evolution in architectural aesthetics, urban forms, and cultural practices, reshaping the way people live, build, and adapt to their changing environments throughout the 21st century.
About the curators
Sana Frini is a tunisian architect based in Mexico City, and co-founder of de LOCUS (Mexico). Her work focuses on architectural practices of the global South, such as participatory processes, artisanal manufactured systems, post-vernacularities, local reintegration and climate resilience. With LOCUS, Sana Frini has recently delivered various contextual regeneration projects, including the construction of Mexico's first low-carbon public building, Latin America's first zero-waste restaurant and the continent's first rehabilitative climate prison. She was also selected to curate the Île-de-France 2025 biennial of architecture and landscape, as well as the Mexican pavilion at the Venice Biennale 2025 among a collective lead by Ignacio Urquiza (Estudio IUAPdA), Ana Paula Ruiz Galindo and Mecky Reuss (Pedro&Juana), Jachen Schleich (Locus), María Marín de Buen, Lucio Usobiaga Hegewisch, and Nathalia Muguet. Sana Frini has taught in the USA at universities such as Cornell University, Columbus and Kent University.
Philippe Rahm is a Swiss architect with a degree from the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne and a doctorate from the Université de Paris-Saclay, whose practice of PHILIPPE RAHM ARCHITECTES is based in Paris. His work, from the physiological to the meteorological, has received an international audience in the context of sustainability. His projects include the Taichung Central Park in Taiwan, inaugurated in 2020 (with Mosbach paysagistes). In 2023, he authored the books Histoire naturelle de l'architecture, Climatic architecture and The Anthropocene Style. He has taught at Harvard, Princeton and Columbia universities, HEAD – Geneva and ENSA Versailles. He has taken part in numerous biennials, including those in Venice (2025), Tbilisi (2024), Madrid (2024), Chicago (2023) or Tallinn (2022). In 2025, he is co-curator of the Île-de-France and Saint-Etienne biennales. He is a knight of the Monaco Order of Cultural Merit and has been awarded the Silver Medal of the French Academy of Architecture.
