SAPIENS

Turning to one of the oldest myths in our history, to the ancient Greek source, we find the first architect of our civilization, Daedalus, trapped in the labyrinth he himself built in Crete to imprison the Minotaur. Unable to pass by sea or land, Daedalus devised a system for escaping by air: feathers glued to the arms with wax. We generally only remember Daedalus's first instruction, which was not to get too close to the sun so as not to burn our wings, but we forget the second, just as important: we must not fly too low, close to the sea, so that the humidity would not weigh down the feathers. Thus, Daedalus, speaking to his son Icarus, urges him to "fly between the two": "inter utrumque uola" (Ovid, Metamorphoses, 8, 152-259).

In the poems of Aristophanes and Ovid, this very first architect gives us a lesson that is clearly conveyed despite the passage of time: it is a dual indication of temperance and rigor, the perfect definition of a dynamic, middle position, the search for balance.
The spectacular fall of Icarus, depicted so many times in the history of art, from Saraceni to Brueghel the Elder, has unfortunately eclipsed the beautiful lesson of Daedalus, the first Western architect. This myth from the depths of time is, however, a guide for architects.
The path to salvation for architects has thus, since the dawn of time, consisted of attempting to remain in the middle strata, in balance, in an intermediate position, in a symbolic position linking the high and the low. The architect should thus be a figure of balance rather than an avant-garde figure. This Greek and then Roman maxim is not a nascent wisdom at the dawn of our civilization, but probably the sum of the experience acquired by our distant predecessors during the first 300,000 years of Sapiens' existence. This middle path is a practical philosophy: the architect is in the position of mediation par excellence, between the high and the low of society, but also between concepts and percepts.

Thus, at the heart of territories, in touch with reality, the architect is often the lowest common denominator of architectural and landscape quality, positioned in balance between decentralized government services and clients, both private and public. From this fundamental human experience of the practice of architecture as an intermediary profession in a given practice environment, by presenting projects brought together in the same unity of place, the canton of Montignac-Lascaux in Dordogne, Sapiens proposes to explore this in-between position, this notion of balance between the past and the future, between concepts and percepts, between scholarly culture and vernacular experience, between the posture of the scholar and that of the handyman, between the existing and the projected...

Opening: 17.10.2025, 6.30 p.m.