Architecture’s most sensorial festival returns to the courtyards of Montpellier, this year reimagining indulgence not as sin, but as a creative catalyst. With edible metaphors, olfactory sculptures and sculptural desserts, FAV 2025 invites visitors to feast with their eyes and their imagination.
Photo credit: photoarchitectures.com
What happens when architectural imagination collides with the irresistible pull of dessert? You get a festival that tastes as good as it looks. Welcome to Festival des Architectures Vives 2025, where “La Gourmandise” isn’t just a theme, it’s a mood board, a muse and a mission.
This year, Montpellier’s hidden courtyards transformed into ephemeral dreamscapes, from airy pastry-like installations to scent-driven architecture and crispy experimental structures that might’ve been baked rather than built.
Local pastry visionary Clara Jung led the charge, blurring the line between patisserie and pavilion with a philosophy that’s equal parts aesthetic, emotion, and elevation.
What follows is a delectable recap of FAV 2025, awards, installations, standout collabs, and how this year’s edition made us rethink indulgence as a radical design gesture. Bon appétit.
The Festival des Architectures Vives offers the public an immersive exploration of Montpellier’s architectural treasures each year – its historic courtyards. The 2025 edition, held from 10-15 June, featured 13 installations within these historic sites, attracting nearly 16,000 visitors and receiving very positive feedback.
From over 90 applications received, the selection committee selected 10 teams. FAV 2025 brought together 23 architects, from 5 French teams and 5 international teams. In addition, two projects were presented as part of the European ReCITYing program, an initiative that explores new ways of reinvesting in urban space through architecture.
How Pastry Became the Muse of Modern Design
FAV 2025, with the delicious theme of “La Gourmandise”
“La Gourmandise”, usually associated with the pleasure of the taste buds, was revealed in an architectural dimension where materials, shapes, and spaces were transformed into a true celebration of desire. Far from being a simple sin, indulgence became a vector of creativity and innovation. The installations awakened the desire to be explored, tasted with the eyes, and savoured with the mind. For this delicious edition, talented Montpellier pastry chef Clara Jung was the patron.
Through this choice, the festival affirmed its desire to promote the talents of the region, who, through their creativity and high standards, promote artistic and sensory innovation both locally and beyond. By choosing her as patron, the festival celebrates local excellence.
Her approach fully reflects the mind of the festival: awakening the senses, kindling curiosity, inviting exploration. Clara sculpts her creations with the same care that an architect applies to shaping a space. She explores materials: crispy, soft, and foamy, just as one would work with wood, concrete, or light.
Far from a simple guilty pleasure, “La Gourmandise” can become a driving force for creation, a source of inspiration. Clara Jung embodies this encounter between the culinary and architectural worlds: generous, bold, experimental, and resolutely focused on emotions.
For the FAV, Clara created “La bouche secrète du FAV,” an ephemeral pastry designed especially for the festival, available in her downtown boutique.
Environmental commitment:
The Festival des Architectures Vives has reaffirmed its commitment to sustainability by maintaining a rigorous environmental charter. Continuing in partnership with Mas Réemploi, the festival encourages the use of recycled materials and reuse in the design of its facilities.
Focus on the European ReCITYing project:
ReCITYing, a project co-founded by the European Union’s Europe program, aims to create a networking and exchange platform on practices for the temporary reuse of urban spaces.
Intended for young creatives, professionals in architecture, design, and the arts, as well as policymakers and local social enterprises, this project promotes the regeneration of unused urban spaces and buildings into artistic laboratories and cultural incubators.
This project promotes the regeneration of unused urban spaces and buildings into artistic laboratories and cultural incubators.
During the 2025 edition of the festival, UNIGE and the IAAC presented works exploring the relationship between architecture and scenography, and between architecture and Land Art. During the 2027 edition, partners LUH and UGM will highlight the interactions between architecture and music, and between architecture and visual arts.
FAV 2025 was:
- A 19th edition in Montpellier
- 16,000 visitors
- 13 installations including 3 collaborations
- 23 architects
- 36 mediators, students at the Montpellier School of Architecture
- The creation of a perfume
About Festival des Architectures Vives
Since 2006, the Festival des Architectures Vives has offered the public an immersive exploration of Montpellier’s architectural treasures: its private courtyards. By transforming little-known historic spaces with contemporary architectural installations, the festival fosters a dialogue between past and present, tradition and innovation. Each installation is created by teams of young architects. The event is free, reflecting this desire to be open to as many people as possible.
The FAV is organized by Elodie Nourrigat and Jacques Brion, architects in Montpellier, as well as Judith Rossi and Amila Breton for this 2025 edition.
FAV 2025 served up architecture with a sweet twist.
With pastry chef Clara Jung at the creative helm, “La Gourmandise” became a playground of sensory seduction, 13 installations that invited visitors to taste space, smell memory and see indulgence reimagined. From an ephemeral dessert boutique to a custom fragrance and an edible awards lineup, this year’s festival didn’t just make a statement, it made us hungry for more.
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