Propaganda, and sometimes publicity, plays with bold symbolic images whose meanings are often distilled by a short text. It sells values. It is successful when all its elements, graphic or written, add a layer of meaning.

Can a building become this type of speaker for an organisation or idividuals? Can it be a privileged medium to propagate information and ideology? Is it by being very visible, very expressive? Is it by being sober? In any way, it needs to target its public and talk to it using a meaningful imagery.

A house for refugee journalists can use the notion of diffusing information and targeting a specific public. I am interested in the gradation between its very public aspect – the causes journalists may defend – and its very private side – the housing facility for refugees. Between those two extremes exists a large gradient of more or less public – more or less visible – spaces and surfaces.

The Maison des Journalistes (MJ) will provide lodging facilities for a group refugee journalist as well as the technical means to create information. It is not only the place where media information is produced, but the media itself. It is conceived as a very exposed billboard, housing, concealing, and protecting the journalists’ personal life.