Rhône Vivant! Tracing a Living Bioregion
Guillaume de Morsier
Matthieu Duperrex
Maude Herzog
Suzanne Husky
Valentin Kunik
Nelly Monnier
Laurence Piaget-Dubuis
Tania Praz
Eric Tabuchi
We are a collective of architects, artists, anthropologists, and geographers whose practices intersect along the river, to co-create a dynamic and engaged reflection on the emerging cultural, material and spatial practices specific to the Rhône bioregion.
It is currently composed of the following persons: Guillaume de Morsier - architect, Valentin Kunik - architect, Matthieu Duperrex – artist and philosopher, Nelly Monnier - artist, Eric Tabuchi -artist, Suzanne Husky – artist, Jean Chamel - anthropologist, Laurence Piaget-Dubuis – artist and photographer, Tania Praz – graphic designer and musician, Maude Herzog – cultural mediator.
The collective has been established in 2025 and initiated by Valentin Kunik and Guillaume de Morsier. Together they co-founded the office Kunik de Morsier architectes (Lausanne-Marseille), developing a practice at the intersection of architecture, art, and science. Their contextual and multidisciplinary approach spans from territorial projects to artistic installations, as well as public and cultural facilities.
From its glacial origins in the Swiss Alps to its Mediterranean delta, the Rhône flows through some 800 km of territory, ecosystems and human history. It is a vital axis that structures a vast hydraulic region inhabited by over 11 million people in Switzerland and France. This watershed forms a geographical and cultural continuum that transcends administrative boundaries, and represents a framework for life, production, energy and shared narratives. Since at least Élisée Reclus and Perkins Marsh, the watershed has been considered to interweave the histories of humans and entities of nature and thus underpin the concept of the bioregion in its ecological and political dimensions.
So how do we tell the story of this hybridity, while at the same time claiming vitality, singularity, diversity, community, sustenance and sharing - all values of the bioregion? As an architectural practice based in Lausanne and Marseille, we have been researching this notion of bioregion applied to the space of the Rhône watershed since 2022. Our approach combines architecture, anthropology, ecology and geography to highlight the links between territory, know-how and architectural production.
For this project, we propose to map and exhibit these material, constructive and spatial cultures that characterize this Rhône bioregion in all its creative contradictions. Through material resources, architectural forms and narratives (poetic, scientific, mythological), the research will aim to bring out a sensitive and critical vision of the territory. This work will also explore what could be an architectural and territorial project based on local resources, shared history, infrastructural legacies and the challenges of ecological transition. Far from being a static inventory, the outcomes (exhibition, events, publications…) will seek to stimulate a dynamic and engaged reflection on the emerging cultural, material and spatial practices specific to the Rhône watershed.