Permanence in urban planning - Arles

Aglaée Degros
Alice Steiner
Anselm Wagner

Cities are not just made up of new buildings, but of historical overlays and layers. Buildings, spaces, and typologies survive for centuries, adapting, being reinterpreted, and reused. Arles is an extraordinary example of this permanence.

From Roman antiquity to the present day, architectural structures, urban orders, and meanings overlap here. The city can be read as continuity in change. Based on Aldo Rossi's concept of permanence, we understand the city not as a sequence of breaks, but as a continuous transformation of existing structures. Theoretical and historical foundations for the urban development of Arles as a stratification of times are developed and analyzed based on Aldo Rossi's “Architecture of the City.”

In the second part, we examine specific buildings and their urban environment on site.

Historical buildings, such as the amphitheater, are interpreted as carriers of permanence and change. On this basis, we do not create classic architectural designs, but rather speculative spaces of possibility. We do not ask how buildings need to be redesigned, but rather how their enduring spatial and typological qualities can be further developed, reinterpreted, and used in a contemporary way. Permanence is not understood as stagnation, but as a productive constant and a key to rethinking the city of the 21st century.

in cooperation with: ENSA Versailles

Excursion to Arles: May 4-8, 2026

€400 subsidy per person

End of course: June 2, 2026

Final presentation: June 23, 2026

Presentation: February 26, 2026, 2:10 p.m., HS B, Kopernikusgasse 24/3rd floor

Photo: J.B. (Jean Baptiste) Guibert - postcard of old engraving, scanned by Robert Schediwy