ACCATTONE

A project by Ismaël Bennani, Sophie Dars, Orfée Grandhomme, Carlo Menon

Editors: Sophie Dars, Carlo Menon, Galaad Van Daele

Designers: Ismaël Bennani & Orfée Grandhomme (Überknackig)

Accattone
℅ Sophie Dars & Carlo Menon
Av. Fontaine Vanderstraeten 49/1
B-1190 Brussels

info@accattone.be

ISSN 2295-6255

The magazine is financed, published and distributed by Accattone asbl/vzw, a non-profit organisation registered in Belgium (BE 0550585163)

Accattone explores minor practices in art and architecture through the specific means of the printed magazine. As an exhibition on paper, each issue is a montage of contributions whose shared positions towards reality, history and representation resonate with one another.

In the current landscape of non-commercial publications, Accattone’s originality lies in the strong visual orientation and in the close association of methods, editorial devices and featured contents. Through these experiments, crossing the methods of artists-as-iconographers with emerging architectural practices, Accattone addresses critically a fundamental aspect of thinking and practice: the working document and the changing status of the image.

A-periodical, self-published and non-subsidized, Accattone was launched in 2014 by two architects (Sophie Dars & Carlo Menon) and two graphic designers (Ismaël Bennani & Orfée Grandhomme), joined in 2019 by architect Galaad Van Daele. Through eight issues and several side projects, which include books and exhibitions, the project has gained international recognition and distribution in both professional and academic contexts, including the first Index Architecture Book Fair (Mexico City), the Venice Biennale and the CCA Montreal.

ISSUES SO FAR

Accattone #1 (March 2014) features artists and architects dealing with found forms, state transformations and 1:1 scale models.
With documents by Jaro Straub, Victor Horta, Simon Boudvin, Anne Holtrop, Bas Princen, Maaike Lauwaert, De Vylder Vinck Taillieu, Ludwig Mies van Der Rohe, Robbrecht en Daem, Christiane Lange, Sandro Della Noce Gilles Pourtier Guillaume Gattier, Alvar Aalto, Oscar Tuazon.

Accattone #2 (4 September 2015) draws on several themes from the first issue – material shifts, models and model-like buildings, the role of found images in the design process – to address specific methods and approaches which challenge established aesthetic codes: bricolage, minor architecture, personal narratives and collections.
With documents by Aurélien Froment, Koenraad Dedobbeleer, Baukunst, Manuel Montenegro, René Heyvaert, Jean Renaudie, Studio Tom Emerson at ETH, 6a architects, Good Times & Nocturnal News, Eric Lapierre, Brandlhuber+, Erica Overmeer, Martinez Barat Lafore.

Accattone #3 (11 September 2015) is a single content magazine specially produced for The Corner Show exhibition in Antwerp. Both an autonomous object and a continuation of Accattone #2, it consists in a 96x64 cm poster folded into an 8-page publication in which Martinez Barat Lafore present a collection of 137 images and quotations inherent to their conceptual and built work.

Accattone #4 (August 2016) draws on the idea of collection to explore mythical methods and visual ethnographies in contemporary practices, with an interest in the compression, into a single artefact, of long periods of history, power relations, memories and everyday experience.
It features anthropology museums, underground data centres and minor collections performed in private houses, double-sided masks and architectural strata in a floor slab or a facade, totemic mock-ups on a 1:1 scale and metaphors in the desert.

Accattone #5 (March 2018) is based entirely on the work of Armin Linke. It explores photography in relation to the major architecture of public and private institutions: the infrastructure of the Roman Empire, neoclassical Athens, the United Nations headquarters, neo-liberal corporate environments and the fragile European institutions in Brussels. Photography can challenge the power of such representations by bringing out their inherent glitches, small cracks and everyday ambiguities.

Accattone #6 (September 2019) explores a renewed relationship with land, matter, ‘nature’ and localities against the backdrop of the new climate regime.
With Pier Vittorio Aureli & Maria Shéhérazade Giudici, Sammy Baloji & Filip De Boeck, Sandra Bartoli & Silvan Linden (AG), Club Donny, Annee Grøtte Viken, Go Hasegawa, Junya Ishigami + associates, Eva Le Roi, Christoph Meier Ute Müller Robert Schwarz & Lukas Stopczynski, Quentin Nicolaï, Kayoko Ota, Piet Oudolf & Thomas Piper, Plant en Houtgoed, Christopher Roth & 431, Sanaa, Sitterwerk Foundation, UR Peaks Altitude 35 & Zefco, Galaad Van Daele.

Accattone #7 (May 2021) deals with open-air domesticity and the diplomatic hospitality of land. It presents intellectual and architectural projects, both contemporary and historical, for alternative modes of living.
With Costantino Nivola, SNCDA et al. at the Venice Architecture Biennale, Aglaia Konrad, Alice Paris on De Smet Vermeulen, Osamu Ishiyama and Kenji Kawai, TEN, Wim Cuyvers, moilesautresart, DSCTHK, Piovenefabi, Emmanuelle Chiappone Piriou on Superstudio, Carlo Goncalves on Smiljan Radic, The Museum of Mistakes on Arakawa & Gins, and Zuber panoramic wallpapers.

Accattone #8 (May 2024) addresses matters of construction in relation to time, use, change and technical knowledge against the backdrop of the ‘negative commons’ inherited from the productivist society of the past century – ‘zombie’ habits, desires, products and processes that our contemporary condition can no longer sustain, yet cannot help but reproduce.
With Clément Hébert, Élodie Degavre, all the 50+ participants to the ~~High Tech Low Tech~~ exhibition at EPFL Lausanne, DSCTHK (Jérôme André & Thibaut Blondiau), Oliver Burch, Kosmos, Fuminori Nousaku & Mio Tsuneyama, Antoine Angeard & Lise Duchamp, Lars Lerup, Pierre Leguillon.

COMMISSIONED PROJECTS

~~High Tech Low Tech~~ (2024) is an exhibition that presents projects and experiments based on hybrid forms of technological knowledge and skills – between engineer and bricoleur, neither high-tech nor low-tech – that are transferred and contaminated across disciplines and social groups.

Magasin/Magazine (2023) is an ongoing project transforming a rural building into a ‘place to write and make things’ through a series of specific architectural interventions, each based on one-off collaborations that mobilize different sensibilities, materials, knowledge and know-how, like the contents of a magazine. It consists in a comprehensive planted model and a series of mock-ups and prototypes.

Écoles troubles (2023) is a student workshop and a publication based on three round-table conversations, edited and spatialized by Accattone together with the students and the teachers at ÉNSA Versailles.

Villa Thunberg (2020) is a theoretical project for a territorial, post-sedentary ‘villa’ – dedicated to the tutelary figure of Greta Thunberg – that confronts the changing climate regime through the human, plant and animal migrations it entails. It consists in a planted model and a poster.

Bookshop (2018) is a installation that pursues Accattone’s exploration of the boundaries between exhibition and publication as tools to understand the processes at stake in architecture. It consists in movable panels displaying the artistic and architectural intervention inside an art house, through archival materials and site photography.

Corporate Arcadia (2017) is an exhibition that applies the methods of Accattone to look at what is usually disregarded by architecture culture: the corporate architecture of banking headquarters, office buildings and hotels that has mostly shaped the city of Brussels in the 1990s and early 2000s.

Architecture Documents on Five Projects (2015) is an exhibition and a book illustrating the complexity and heterogeneous nature of five ongoing architecture projects by V+, mapping their lines of tension and questioning the status of the (working) document within architectural discourse.

BOOKS

Res Nullius, by Wim Cuyvers (2025, published by Masereel with the support of Accattone).

Z33, House for Contemporary Art, Design & Architecture, by Francesca Torzo (2025, co-published with Architecture Curating Practice and Verlag der Buchhandlung Walther und Franz König). With a critical essay by Christoph Grafe.

Building Correctly, by Francesca Torzo (2025, co-published with Architecture Curating Practice and Verlag der Buchhandlung Walther und Franz König). With additional contributions by Elizabeth Hatz and Ellis Woodman.

Impasse des Lilas, by MBL (2025). With contributions by Accattone (main content), Thomas Daniell, Alexandra Midal, Philip Ursprung.

Simple Architecture: Villa Baizeau in Carthage by Le Corbusier and Jeanneret, ed. by Roberto Gargiani (2024). With contributions by Chacha Atallah, Baukunst, Tim Benton, Mohamed Ali Berhouma, Thomas Bilanges, Jean-Louis Cohen, Sophie Delhay, Dogma, Expérience, Fala, Roberto Gargiani, André Kempe, Jacques Lucan, Sabine Massenet, Office Kersten Geers David Van Severen, Point Supreme, Anna Rosellini.

Château de Chambord, Dilmun Burial Mounds, Jože Plečnik, Río Tinto, Victor Horta, by Maxime Delvaux (2023, co-published with Architecture Curating Practice and Verlag der Buchhandlung Walther und Franz König). With contributions by Sophie Dars, Roxane Le Grelle, Carlo Menon, Grégoire Motte, Ali Ismail Karimi, Jure Grohar, Radim Louda (Central ofaau), Felipe Gómez Gómez, Iwan Strauven and Maarten Delbeke.

Écoles troubles, ed. by Sophie Dars, Carlo Menon and Galaad Van Daele (2023). With contributions by Pierre Chabard, Emmanuelle Chiappone-Piriou, Wim Cuyvers, École Zéro (Candice Pigeard, Elea Clancier, Eva-Léna Chaudel), Éditions Burn⁓Août (Théo Pall), Olaf Grawert, Benjamin Lafore, Yann Legouis, Charlotte Malterre-Barthes, Caroline Maniaque and 90 architecture students at ÉNSA Versailles.

Grand Dessein du Rationalisme, ed. by Roberto Gargiani and Marson Korbi (2021). With contributions by Marco Assennato, Jean-Louis Cohen, Massimo De Angelis, Natalie Donat-Cattin, Roberto Gargiani, Silvia Groaz, Boris Hamzeian, Marson Korbi, André Kempe & Oliver Thill, Éric Lapierre, Francesco Marullo, Point Supreme, Ten Studio, Christophe Van Gerrewey and Adrien Verschuere.

Objects of Fascination, a project by CENTRAL (Radim Louda, Paul Mouchet & Valentin Piret), Maxime Delvaux and UR, ed. by Sophie Dars and Roxane Le Grelle (2021, co-published with Architecture Curating Practice). With table designs by 44 architectural practices.

Five Stories of São Paulo, by Eva Le Roi and Pierre Burquel (2020).

Un nouveau musée, by Simon Boudvin (2019, co-published with MER).

BOOK FAIRS & EXHIBITIONS

Book fairs. Acid Free (Los Angeles), Aichi Art Book Fair, A Puta da Leitura (Lisbon), Architecture and Landscape Book Fair (Brussels), Artists Print (Brussels), Biennial Books (Venice), GABF (Gent), Independent (Brussels), Index Architecture (Mexico), Miss Read (Berlin), Offprint (Paris), Wiels Art Book Fair (Brussels).

Exhibitions. ~~High Tech Low Tech~~ (EPFL Archizoom, Lausanne); Émulations (Académie des beaux-arts, Paris); Institution Building (CIVA Brussels, 2021); Reading Room (New Generation Festivals, Royal Academy of Spain in Rome, 2021); The Library (Oslo Architecture Triennale, 2019); Exemplaires, formes et pratiques de l’édition (Rennes, 2019); A Print (Gothenburg and ArkDes, Stockholm, 2017); Fiamme. Fifty Contemporary Magazines: Art, Fashion, Architecture and Design (IUAV, Venice, 2017); The Corner Show (Extra City, Antwerp, 2015); Archizines World Tour (various locations, 2014–2015).

Initial website design by Cleo Brun, with LayTheme.
Full-screen photographs by Simon Boudvin, Philippe Braquenier, Cleo Brun, Silvia Cappellari, Maxime Delvaux, Jan Kampenaers, Eva Le Roi & Pierre Burquel, Cinzia Maria Romanin, Martha Virgaux, We Document Art, … and a few others.

© Accattone 2014–2025

SELECTED TALKS & EVENTS

2025. Public presentation with artist Pierre Leguillon at ENSA Paris-Est, 4 Nov. / Launch of MBL’s Impasse des Lilas in Brussels at Galleria Continua, Paris, 17 May / Launch of MBL’s Impasse des Lilas in Brussels at Saint-Martin Bookshop, Brussels, 25 Apr. / Accattone is part of Brussels Based exhibition, 21 Mar. – 20 Apr / Talk and moderation at Junktopia Bricology: It’s an Editor’s World, ULB Brussels, 7 Mar. / Presentation at Urban, Brussels, 4 Feb.

2024. Touring lectures at Université de Montreal and UQÀM at the invitation of Fondation Grantham, 29–30 Oct. / Blind date with Avarie at Wiels Art Book Fair, 6 Oct. / Simple Architecture launch at CIVA Brussels, 12 Jun. / Accattone #8 launch at Bar à Nelson, Brussels, 25 May / Opening lecture of the exhibition ~~High Tech Low Tech~~ at EPFL Archizoom, Lausanne, 13 Mar.

2023. Opening of the exhibition Émulations with our project Magasin/Magazine, Paris, 13 Dec. / Presentation to the second-year students in architecture at La Cambre Horta, Brussels, 10 Nov. / Launch of Maxime Delvaux’s Château de Chambord, Dilmun Burial Mounds, Jože Plečnik, Río Tinto, Victor Horta, at et al., Brussels, 29 Jun. / Panel talk on magazines, Venice, 20 May / Lecture at Wiels Art Book Fair, 19 Mar. / Écoles troubles, student workshop and three round tables at ENSA Versailles, 30 Jan. – 3 Feb. / Talk at Index Art Book Fair, Mexico, 21 Jan.

2022. Presentation of Écoles troubles at ENSA Versailles, 15 Dec. / Public discussion on ‘Printing Architecture’ at the Oslo School of Architecture and Design, 29 Nov. / Lecture on Corporate Arcadia at UGent, 17 Oct. / Panel talk ‘Drawing and Architecture’ Art on Paper art fair, Brussels, 22 Oct. / Lecture at Hochschule München, Faculty of Architecture, 11 May / Panel talk on architectural publications at YEAH Festival of Architecture at Kulturfabrik, Esch-sur-Alzette (Luxembourg), 17 Apr. / Lecture at Serra, Ghent, 30 Mar. / Panel talk on ‘Disseminate’ at TU Delft, 10 Mar.

2021. Presentation of Accattone #6 and 7 within the doctoral seminar “SYLVA – Ripensare la « selva », University of Genoa, 17 Nov. / Launch of Objects of Fascination at MAD Brussels, 8 Nov. / Opening and talk of Institution Building at CIVA Brussels, 14 Oct. / Launch of Grand Dessein du Rationalisme at EPFL Lausanne, 13 Oct. / A Puta de Leitura, pop-up book store by Antecâmara Radio and Gallery together with Julia Albani, Lisbon, 10–12 Sep. / Presentation at C-Mine, Genk, 3 Jul. / Round-table conversation ArchiZines Review Ep. 02, curated by Järfälla, 1 Jul. / Accattone #7 launch at Ca’Bu, Venice, within the Biennial Books event hosted by Erica Overmeer, 20–21 May / Podcast on Accattone with Reading Room’s principal Francesca Spiller, as the 20th episode of Periodica Ossessione, Radio Raheem, 9 Mar. / Lecture on “Restriction” at the student-run initiative Ateliers Nocturnes. La Cambre Horta faculty of architecture, Brussels, 27 Feb. / Lecture at Villa Medici, Rome, 16 Feb.

2020. Seminar with Sébastien Marot and Djamel Klouche, ENSA Versailles, 2 Dec. / Talk at CIVA / Kanal Centre Pompidou, Brussels, 1 Oct. / Launch of Eva Le Roi & Pierre Burquel’s book Five Stories of São Paulo at Speculoos, Brussels, 4 Mar. / Accattone’s model and poster for Villa Thunberg exhibited at Villa Noailles, Hyères, 8 Feb – 15 Mar.

2019. Accattone #6 launch event at La Loge with a presentation by the editors, 21 Nov. / Launch of Accattone #6 at Ampersand, Lisbon, with projection of Christopher Roth’s movie Architecting After Politics and talks by artists Simon Boudvin and Giaime Meloni, 5 Oct. / Accattone #6 is part of The Library exhibition, Oslo Architecture Triennale, 26 Sep – 24 Nov. / Accattone #6 launch event at Volume bookshop, Paris, 25 Sep. / Presentation at Mendrisio Academy of Architecture, 7 May / “Publishing in Architecture”, panel talk with Mark Wigley (Columbia), Francisco Moura Veiga (Cartha), Anh-Linh Ngo (Arch+), Sandra Bartoli (AG), Olaf Grawert (ETH), Cédric Libert (CIVA), Erica Overmeer (O Book), Albert Ferré (CCA), Miss Read Art Book Fair, Berlin, 3 May / Presentation within the joint housing workshop at PBSA Düsseldorf, 1 Apr. / Accattone is part of the biennale Exemplaires, formes et pratiques de l’édition, Rennes. / Discussion with Christophe Wavelet at ERG, Brussels, 5 Feb. / Presentation and workshop at ENSA Marne, 28 Jan.

2018. Presentation at the Université d’été programme, Bibliothèque Kandinsky, Centre Pompidou, Paris, 12 Jul. / Clip Stamp Upload 3, panel talk on editorial practices at the Unfolding Pavilion, Venice Biennale, 27 May / Launch of Accattone #5 and OASE #100 at Bruno bookshop, Venice, 26 May. / “Major to Minor”, public lecture on Accattone, “Magazine Architecture” and Corporate Arcadia, hosted by Horizonte magazine at Bauhaus-Universität Weimar, 8 May. / “Alternative publishing practices in architecture”, conversation with photographer Erica Overmeer at Miss Read book fair, Berlin, 6 May / Accattone #5 launch event, with screening of Armin Linke’s film Alpi. Brussels, WTC Tower, 29 Mar. / “Assemblage and Condensation”, lunch-time talk series Interludes, Bogdan & Van Broeck studio, Brussels, 14 Feb.

2017. “Condensations”, opening lecture on the curatorial approach to Accattone and Corporate Arcadia exhibition. TU Delft, 7 Dec. / Presentation at a lunch-time lecture for interested teachers and students at KTH Stockholm, 10 Nov. / Presentation of Accattone and its use of photography at Konst-Ig bookshop, with Maxime Delvaux. Stockholm, 8 Nov. / Salon des pensées inconnues. Panel talk with Pier Vittorio Aureli (Dogma), Sandra Bartoli (AG), Lisa De Visscher (A+) and Françoise Fromonot (Criticat), within Flanders Architecture Institute’s Architects’ Night at deSingel, Antwerp, 8 Sep. / Accattone is part of the exhibition A Print, organised by Studio Nock in Gothenburg and ArkDes, Stockholm. / Accattone is part of the exhibition Fiamme. Fifty Contemporary Magazines: Art, Fashion, Architecture and Design, IUAV, Venice, 5 May – 1 Jun. / Guest lecture on Accattone’s curatorial practice within the seminar “Writing architecture” at ENSA Nancy (Emeline Curien tutor), 28 Feb. / Presentation at ULg Festival d’Architecture, Liège, 25 Feb.

2016. Lecture series “Bâtiment Machine?” at the Peter Behrens School of Arts, Düsseldorf, 7 Dec. / Public lecture and workshop within CCA’s research project Talking Pictures, with Stefano Graziani, Yasufumi Nakamori and 8 international researchers. Montreal, 13 Oct. / Accattone #4 launch and Bedroom Talk with 51N4E architects Freek Persyn & Johan Anrys. Deborah Bowmann, Brussels, 23 Sep. / Promenade conversations. Round-table conversation on architectural publishing at the Belgian Pavilion, Venice Architecture Biennale, with OASE, Criticat, DVVT, De Smet Vermeulen, 51N4E, Office KGDVS & others. 27 May. / Presentation within the Book of Copies exhibition at Sint-Lucas, Brussels, 20 Apr. / Panel discussion on experimental and conceptual approaches to publishing in architecture, with Giovanni Piovene of San Rocco and Frida Escobedo, moderated by Erica Overmeer. Index Architecture book art fair at Museo Jumex, 4–7 Feb. / Panel discussion on editorial practice as an exhibition practice, with (SIC), Midpoint editors, BlackJack Editions, moderated by Loraine Furter. Seminar SHARE, ARBA, Brussels, 26 Jan.

2015. Lecture for the teaching staff of the Academy of Fine Arts in Ghent, 3 Dec. / Accattone #3 is featured in The Corner Show at Extra City, Antwerp, 12 Sep. – 6 Dec. / Accattone #2-3 launch at Volume bookshop, Paris, with architects Sébastien Martinez Barat and Benjamin Lafore, 7 Oct. / International conference “Thinking Architecture Through Publication”, Lisbon, 28-30 Sep. / Lecture “Architecture in the Second Degree” for Belgian magazine A+, 18 Sep. / Lecture “Architecture in the Second Degree” at ICA London, within the exhibition Everything is Architecture: Bau Magazine from the 60s and 70s, 15 Sep. / Modulor’s lecture series “Faking Fiction – Unbuilt Realities” at Extra City Kunsthal, Antwerp, 13 May.

2014. Accattone is part of the Archizines World Tour starting from ETH Zurich, 8–31 Oct. / Round table on periodicals organised by the Prix Fernand Baudin, Brussels, 10 Jun. / Accattone #1 launch at Betts Project, London, 29 May. / Accattone #1 launch with Anne Holtrop’s lecture “Material Gesture”, Etablissement d’en face, Brussels, 11 Apr.