Virginie Maris is an environmental philosopher. A Research Director at the CNRS, she works at the Centre d’Écologie Fonctionnelle et Évolutive in Montpellier, in close collaboration with ecologists and biologists.
Virginie Maris is an environmental philosopher. In Nature à vendre – les limites des services écosystémiques (Nature for Sale – The Limits of Ecosystem Services), she questions the relevance of monetary valuation of services rendered by nature. You would never calculate how much your relationship brings you, so why do it with nature? Extract from the article Considering Separation Beyond Dualism, published in Stream 05: New Intelligences
The environmental crisis and the realization of the Anthropocene have fundamentally altered the way we relate to nature. Dissenting with the idea that nature is “dying” and opting for the idea of a generalized hybridity, Virginie Maris advocates keeping a separation—which she distinguishes from dualism—between man and nature, as a radical otherness worthy of attention, care, and respect. This vision of nature as the “wild part of the world,” free from human intentionality, helps put into perspective renaturation and rewilding processes, but also criticizes the notion of ecosystem services, in particular due to their dimension of commodification of nature and their contingency on an ideology of economic growth.
The rediscovery of the ecosystems services of nature in urban environments, in particular regarding pollution mitigation and fighting against heat islands, have put a new emphasis on the intelligence of trees, as botanist Francis Hallé describes “plant architecture.” He advocates making trees more prominent in cities, though as a prerequisite to any urbanization, which implies promoting an intimate knowledge of the way they operate and their temporality in order to improve their planting, maintenance, and respect.
Mathias Rollot, PhD in Architecture, presents the “bioregion” concept, which was developed in the United States during the 1970s as a tool to describe the possibility of inventing new ways of living. By pushing beyond administrative boundaries, it allows us to deploy an imaginary (rather than a final map) of a territory that must be inhabited better, i.e., reinhabited.
Discover the inaugural lecture of the “Alma Matter” series! In a world where the myth of abundance is collapsing, this series of lectures looks at what matter really has to offer. Actors, professions, economies, temporalities, geopolitics: how do contemporary issues of creation take shape through those of matter? Each talk focuses on a particular material, and brings together its stakeholders in a dialogue. The use of stone in construction declined during the twentieth century. Today, its return is acclaimed for its qualities: inertia, durability, low-emission processing, local presence… but what techniques and applications will be used in 2024? As part of the City Metabolism Chair supported by the Université Paris Sciences & Lettres.
Caroline Goulard is a data journalist and co-founder of Dataveyes. She turns collected data into digital experiences to make it more understandable for everyone. Thanks to new ways of visualization, it is now possible to understand a population’s needs and to develop services that anticipate new uses.
Researcher and data scientist Stanislas Chaillou investigates how AI can enable architects to support and enhance their practice. A small sampler of a new book published by Éditions du Moniteur in March 2021.
François Taddei is a geneticist and co-founder, with Ariel Lindner, of the Learning Planet Institute (formerly known as CRI). Conceived as a school for the 21st century, the institute combines artificial intelligence and collective intelligence to reinvent ways of learning, teaching and doing research.
Hubert Beroche is the founder of the Urban AI think tank, dedicated to the field of urban artificial intelligence. He is the curator of the Eyes on the street lecture series, run together in partnership with the SCAI (Sorbonne Center for Artifical Intelligence), and explains here how urban AI can help us understand the city.
Contemporary architectural research is often fascinated by biological life but with an approach that goes beyond simple organic metaphors thanks to recent technological developments. Alisa Andrasek discusses the link between biology and her architectural practice, and her interest in the distribution of information in natural processes—a complexity that she tries to approach via big data. Her work in computational design is influenced by the convergence between information and materials, in an increasingly complex and open synthesis which enables it to go beyond the production of form and address the dynamic processes of matter itself. Alisa Andrasek is an architect, director and founder of the Biothing laboratory. She teaches at the Architectural Association of London.
Researcher Claire Lesieur works at the CNRS Ampère Laboratory on the Go Pro project, which applies a computational model developed for protein folding to urban environments. The shape-changing properties of proteins are put to use in an attempt to map out the opportunities for urban growth that don’t involve urban sprawl.
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Eager to share more generously the results of its collaborations and research, PCA-STREAM publishes STREAM VOICES, its online magazine!