The three sites - Bordeaux Lac, Merignac Soleil, and Begles-Villenave - present distinct conditions that demand specificforms of urbanism as new gateways to the city of Bordeaux. The project, at the urban scale, proposes an equilibriumbetween ecology and urbanity. Architecturally, it proposes building types that innovatively address the demands for human growth in terms of housing, commerce, and public space.

Blanchet, OMA's director of French projects, commented: "Bordeaux's current instability stops masterplanning from coming to fruition and demands radical alternatives that negotiate between public and private sectors; political chaos yields creative opportunism."

"Bordeaux 50000" addresses the central themes of housing and domesticity as well as the need to create a public platform for discussion. The exhibition is conceived as an abstraction of the metropolitan salon. Furniture pieces are stripped of their original function and are used instead as display devices for drawings, models, and objects. Wallpaper wraps around the room as a spatial grid within which the furniture are reconfigured monthly according to different urban conditions: the block; the strip; the cul-de-sac; the periphery; and the archipelago.

"Bordeaux 50000" is on at arc en rêve, 7 Rue Ferrere,Bordeaux, 9 July-21 November.