The PAB House project is organized around the arrangement of two L-shaped blocks. The first, more sober and dense, houses the private area, offering privacy and comfort. The second block, with its more open and fluid configuration, houses the social area, characterized by large openings that promote continuous integration with the outdoors, creating a sense of unity between the spaces.

The Grenelle Seine swimming site offered a unique opportunity to take part in a historic project for Parisians, while reaffirming the role of architects, even in highly technical undertakings. After a hundred-year ban on swimming in the Seine, Mater Studio designed and led the construction of a structure that had yet to exist: a seasonal and fully demountable site, designed to accommodate 300 people, including a 950 m², 60-metre-long swimming area, a 415 m² floating structure, and 480 m² of facilities on land. The entire site was installed on the footprint of a former car park and was designed not to disturb the neighbouring residential barges, with which it shares the entire water infrastructure. But above all, the challenge was to invite the public to take a gesture that is as simple as it is intimidating: to dive into the Seine. To achieve this, the project had to act simultaneously on three key levels: the site, the body, and the imagination.

The house is conceived as a monolithic volume with refined geometry, suspended over a steeply sloping topography. Access is through an intermediate level, via a recessed entrance in a completely blank façade, which reinforces the perception of mass and opacity in contrast with the lightness of the main volume. The concrete platforms leading to the house replicate the effect of suspension, establishing a formal dialogue with the building and accentuating the sensation of floating above the ground.

What does it mean to build with care, using what others leave behind? This question shapes the work of the Matter Matters Lab, an initiative founded by architect and researcher Catherine Söderberg Esper during the isolation of the pandemic. Drawing from experiences across cultures and motivated by a personal transformation during motherhood, Catherine began to investigate everyday waste as raw material for regenerative construction systems. Her first experiment involved gluing her own cut hair using white glue, initiating a radically intimate and handmade approach. Since then, the lab has focused on transforming organic waste into low-impact architectural materials, inspired by Indigenous knowledge systems and aiming to break from extractive models in construction. Projects like the Avocado Bricks, made from discarded avocado seeds, exemplify this approach of local, circular, and rooted in the idea of reciprocity between matter, place, and care, offering a new way of building with waste.