UVLAB

Inclusive, Sustainable Art that connects communities across borders.

UV LAB is a transdisciplinary design and architecture lab structured as a non-profit association.
Working through collective practice, it conceives and builds public installations and spatial systems that invite communities to participate in the making, use, and re-interpretation of shared spaces.

Founded in 2014 on the road between Syria and France, UV LAB developed through site-specific practice at the intersection of art, architecture, and the public realm. Over time, the lab has evolved into a platform for spatial research through making, where design is understood not as a fixed outcome but as a process shaped by context, use, and collective engagement.

A design and architecture lab

UV LAB approaches space as a living surface — social, material, and political.
Its work combines architectural thinking, scenography, and urban design with hands-on fabrication, often at full scale. Temporary and permanent structures, urban furniture, and performative architectures are conceived as open systems: modular, reversible, and adaptable over time.

Digital tools, parametric design, and fabrication strategies are used alongside vernacular techniques and craft knowledge. This dialogue between computation and manual practice allows complex ideas to be unfolded into buildable forms that remain accessible and shareable.

Collective practice and participation

UV LAB operates through collective practice. Projects are developed with artists, architects, technicians, artisans, and local partners, and frequently include participatory workshops with inhabitants, users, and volunteers.

Participation is not treated as a decorative layer but as a structural component of the work. By involving communities in construction and use, UV LAB shifts authorship from a single designer toward shared responsibility and collective ownership of space.

Public space as a commons

UV LAB’s projects are rooted in public space — streets, parks, cultural sites, and shared landscapes. The lab understands public space as a cultural commons shaped by care, maintenance, and everyday use rather than by spectacle alone.

Its installations are designed to host encounters, performances, rest, and appropriation. Many projects function simultaneously as architecture, scenography, and social infrastructure, adapting to different contexts and temporalities.

Ethics, sustainability, and responsibility

Sustainability is central to UV LAB’s practice, not as an aesthetic but as an ethic. The lab prioritizes reclaimed materials, low-impact construction methods, and circular design strategies. Projects are conceived with dismantling, reuse, and transformation in mind from the outset.

As a non-profit association, UV LAB reinvests resources into research, experimentation, and fair working conditions. It actively supports marginalized artists, artisans, and technicians, and works to democratize access to design and construction processes.

Structure

UV LAB is a non-profit association (loi 1901) based in Marseille and operating internationally.
It collaborates with cultural institutions, municipalities, educational bodies, and local organizations, adapting its methods to each context while maintaining a strong commitment to collective making and public engagement.

The Team:

Khaled Alwarea

Co-fondateur, Architecte / Directeur artistique

The logo

The UV LAB logo features a seed pattern created by combining the U and V letters.

When applying generative design methods and Islamic geometric patterns principles, this seed pattern becomes the "cell unit," which is the smallest motif that can be repeated to create the entire geometry. By repeating and rotating the cell unit, the fundamental unit is introduced, and the combined cell units containing the fundamental unit form the fundamental region.

Repeating and rotating the fundamental region results in an intersection between segments or between a segment and the fundamental region's boundaries, leading to fundamental unit parameterization. Each new transformation results in a geometry that is qualitatively similar to the original geometry and can expand infinitely.