Dominique Jakob + Brendan MacFarlane: Creating With…

In this lecture presenting the recent work of Jakob+MacFarlane, Dominique Jakob and Brendan MacFarlane explain the Paris-based office’s approach to creating new architecture out of existing environments. “Creating With” is an attitude that rejects demolition in favour of maintaining, adapting, altering, and transforming. To use what’s already there – as a source, a material, a starting point – is a way of working in a world defined by waste and exhaustion of resources.

How can we grow with the existing in mind? How do we adapt to an increasingly challenged world while being as creative and innovative as possible?

In their project for the Venice Architecture Biennale 2025, Jakob+MacFarlane proposed adding a temporary scaffolding structure to the historic French pavilion during its renovation, challenging our ideas about protection and shelter in a world more and more exposed. Using this structure as a new exhibition space, they invited architects from around the world to show works responding creatively to climate disturbance, resource scarcity, and conflict. This project is now touring the world as a nomadic structure – seeking to provoke, convince, and prove that architecture can meet the challenge.

Ultimately, the core intent driving Jakob+MacFarlane’s work is to cultivate a more caring, thoughtful, and community-centredenvironment we so urgently need.