(From the About section on Bellastock’s official website)

Bellastock is a Cooperative Society of Collective Interest (SCIC) in architecture that works to enhance places and their resources by proposing alternatives to conventional building practices.

Committed to ecological transition, the organization has been developing since 2012 pioneering expertise in France on the reuse of construction materials, as well as a broader reflection on transitional urbanism. Through these practices, Bellastock supports the development of a circular economy applied to the construction sector, which is essential for shaping sustainable territories.

Bellastock’s action is based on four closely connected areas. The fields of REUSE and TRANSITIONAL URBANISM are developed in projects through project management assistance and consultancy in design and planning. These areas give rise to demonstrator projects based on innovative processes that allow for the daily testing and improvement of know-how in the field, in collaboration with construction stakeholders. These experiments support and make possible the development of STUDIES and research programs carried out with and for various public and private institutions.

Bellastock also contributes to the spread of a new architectural culture, which takes shape through TRAINING for professionals, educational projects, and awareness-raising activities for a wide audience by organizing workshops and conferences.

These four complementary fields of action give Bellastock the capacity to explore and develop new ways of thinking about and making the city and its landscapes, in response to tomorrow’s challenges—which are now, more than ever, the challenges of today.

Bellastock was founded in 2006 within the École Nationale Supérieure d’Architecture of Paris-Belleville by a group of students who wanted to compensate for the lack of hands-on practice and experimentation in their academic training. To address this, they launched a project for an annual full-scale construction festival, during which several hundred participants design, build, and inhabit an ephemeral city over the course of four days.

In 2010, Bellastock became a non-profit association under the French 1901 law, progressively professionalized by diversifying its activities, and over the years built a vast network of French and international actors committed to ecological transition and a circular economy.

To adopt a governance model suited to the evolution of its activity, the association became a Cooperative Society of Collective Interest (SCIC) in 2019. By definition, a SCIC aims to produce or provide goods and services of collective interest with a social utility. This legal structure enables Bellastock to continue building a shared strategy with all its members, drawn from the network developed since its inception and divided into five categories: employees, individual members, small businesses, large companies, and local authorities.

All work together with dedication and high standards to support the development of a vision enriched by the diversity of their profiles and skills. The twelve employee-members form a multidisciplinary production team composed of architects, engineers, urban planners, educators, communicators, and administrators, who work daily for Bellastock and the values it promotes. Today, the SCIC Bellastock is open to anyone who wishes to join as a member and contribute to enriching and advancing collective visions and projects.

In 2020, Bellastock was awarded the Young Urban Planners Prize (Palmarès des Jeunes Urbanistes) alongside Altitude 35, FCML, Le Sens de la Ville, Sophie Ricard, and Yes We Camp. This award is granted by the Ministry of Territorial Cohesion and the Ministry of Ecological Transition.

Bellastock website