Film still from Agnès Varda’s The Gleaners and I (2000): a man looking at Jean-François Millet’s The Gleaners (1857).

“G as in gleaning. To glean is to gather after the harvest. A gleaner is one who gleans.” With these words Agnès Varda opens The Gleaners and I. Her film begins with the old agricultural practice of gleaning — returning to the field after the harvest to gather what has been left behind — and traces how the practice continues today.

Gleaning is still alive. It is an act of looking closely, gathering selectively, and recognising value in what is already there. Earlier investigations into garages, palazzi, gas stations, vernacular rural structures and urban building blocks have produced a vast archive of drawings: an Atlas of the Existing. This year, we will mine our own archive.

We will use the Atlas as a material quarry. Instead of beginning with a programme, a site and a blank page, we begin with what has already been found. Plans, sections, structures, fragments and spatial figures become the raw material for new architectures. After years of observing and recording the existing, it is time to return to the field. After years of urban mining, it is time to harvest. The conventional order of design is reversed: first we gather, then we select, then we decide what to do. Gleaning is an act of selection. But harvest is not merely the extraction and reuse of material. It is also a ritual act: a moment of celebration.