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ARCADIA
Les SUBS Lyon, France 2025
A site-responsive installation for LES SUBS —
evolving from 2025 to 2027
Design and construction: UV Lab (Khaled Alwarea, Shnsho, Nour Alkhatib, Samra Bulbol)
Study, technical engineering and structural calculations: Quentin Alart, Laurent Gauthier, Hugo Hazard
Construction: Hafid Chouaf, Konrad Kaniuk, Stéphane Stilitz, Thibaut Quintin
With the participation of students from ENSBA - École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts de Lyon - Théa Champagnon, Julie Correira Gomes, Dixon Diao, Danxian Feng, Ana Paula Ibarra Chapoy, Agathe Joliot, Cécile Madern, Fanny Petton, Yantong Ren, Adèle Revy, Patricia Sadlo, Inas Safadi, Lou Vereertbrugghen, Jiawei Zhang
Metal construction: Louxor Spectacles
Regulatory controls: Alpes Contrôles
Production: Les SUBS, Lyon
Arcadia is supported by SUBLIME, the SUBS group of patrons:
Fondation Daniel et Nina Carasso, Salins / La Baleine, Invox, Adesia, Fondation Banque Populaire Loire et Lyonnais, Polder Avocats , Archimède Avocats
ARCADIA is a long-term artistic installation conceived as a modular architecture that adapts to its environment and the communities around it. Designed to unfold over three years (2025–2027), it transforms the courtyard of LES SUBS into a welcoming, flexible, and evolving space — a place to gather, rest, celebrate, and reflect. At the intersection of public art, architecture, and social design, the project explores how lightweight, adaptable structures can create meaningful, inclusive experiences in public space.
Built with timber, scaffolding systems, and modular components, ARCADIA is both a scenographic gesture and a usable infrastructure: it hosts performances and concerts, but also invites informal appropriation — from spontaneous meetings to quiet pauses. With each season, the installation changes: new modules are added, moved, or reassembled, responding to climatic conditions, programming needs, and feedback from users. It is a project designed to grow over time, without imposing itself — attentive to the rhythm of the place and those who inhabit it.
Why Arcadia?
Arcadia, in classical mythology, refers to a mountainous region of ancient Greece, imagined in literature as a land of simplicity, harmony, and balance between humans and nature. Over time, it became a powerful metaphor: for the pastoral ideal in Virgil’s poetry, for political reflection during the Renaissance, for queer refuge in the 19th and 20th centuries. Today, it carries a renewed resonance — as we search for models of coexistence, resilience, and shared joy. We chose the name ARCADIA to evoke this layered history and reframe it as a contemporary space: not a nostalgic retreat, but a site of encounter, experimentation, and collective imagination. At LES SUBS, Arcadia becomes a structure — and a process — open to all.
The Fixed Structure
The permanent core of ARCADIA is a stepped structure that gently rises along a semicircular path, climbing toward the roof of the ticketing office. Rather than piercing the historic ground, the entire installation is elevated on concrete blocks — a floating foundation that respects and preserves the protected heritage site. The structure is anchored using custom technical solutions that avoid any intervention into the existing architecture.
This elevated path creates a sequence of terraces at different levels — platforms that serve as lookouts, social spaces, and occasional stages. They open new visual connections across the site: to the Saône river, to the Fourvière hill, and to the activities unfolding below. By offering both vertical circulation and spaces to linger, this core element becomes the spine of the project — a visible and accessible frame for collective use.
The Modular System
Around the fixed structure, ARCADIA extends through a family of modular pieces: benches, long chairs, and angled surfaces that can be arranged and rearranged to suit different needs. Each element is designed with a specific geometry that allows it to function independently or as part of a larger configuration. One type of bench, for instance, can be assembled into a half-circle — forming an open platform or an informal stage.
These pieces are lightweight, easy to move, and invite spontaneous use. They can accommodate small gatherings, resting bodies, or community rituals. This modularity allows ARCADIA to remain open-ended — not a finished object, but a system that can respond to changing uses and contexts over time.
A Collective Construction
ARCADIA was built as a collaborative process, in dialogue with students from the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts de Lyon. Throughout several weeks of workshops and on-site construction, students contributed to all stages of the project — from early design discussions to hands-on fabrication. This participatory dimension is essential to UV LAB’s approach: we see architecture not only as a result, but as a social act — a shared construction of meaning, space, and memory.
Working side by side with artists, builders, and engineers, the students brought their perspectives, skills, and questions into the heart of the project. Their presence is not just visible in the physical structure, but embedded in its ethos — one that values care, collective intelligence, and learning-by-doing.
