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Driven by a race for attractiveness, campuses are becoming architectural showcases, competing with corporate headquarters to embody new values and attract curious minds. The form and function of campuses are evolving to meet the changing needs of education, where tradition meets innovation in a drive for excellence and inclusivity. We are entering a new era of higher education!
Andrew Freear runs the Rural Studio program at Auburn School of Architecture (USA). He believes that schools of architecture have an ethical responsibility to train citizen architects who are locally committed to concrete projects and experientially connected to contexts and places. To design an inclusive city, the Studio adopts an experimental field approach, combining analysis of the territory’s endemic problems, understanding of residents’ needs and new construction techniques. Read the full interview published in STREAM 05!
“ Architecture has a unique relationship with the transformation of reality: it is, in a way, atlastic. ”
“ Architecture has a unique relationship with the transformation of reality: it is, in a way, atlastic. ”
Manuel Bello Marcano is an architect, lecturer at ENSA Saint-Etienne and sociologist of the imaginary at the Centre d’études pour l’actuel et le quotidien – CEAQ, Université Paris Descartes (Center for Current and Everyday Studies at Paris Descartes University). In his view, architecture is an act of aggregation designed to put the world in order: in this sense, he is interested in the political fictions mobilized to equip our thinking and, in this case, to build a “ togetherness ”. Follow his words and discover animality understood as community.
Stripes, banners and colored filters are all part of the signature of renowned artist Daniel Buren. His work is rooted in the landscapes and architectures that welcome him and have become his open-air studio. In an exclusive interview with architect Philippe Chiambaretta, he talks about his attraction to transparency and his many collaborations. Discover Les Nuages Colorés, which cover the glass roof of 175 Haussmann with shimmering lights.
For Daniel Buren, architecture is an open-air studio. In an exclusive interview with architect Philippe Chiambaretta, he talks about his site-specific work, where art and architecture meet, just like the Nuages Colorés that cover the scales of the 175 Haussmann glass roof.
Iris Handschin is an architect. In her final year thesis, DMC: Démocratie, matriarcale, citoyenne (DMC : Democracy, Matriarchy, Citizenship), she explores the relationship between sisterhood and architecture. How can we create a shared space of freedom and undo the hierarchical relationships at play in both private and public spaces? Exploring the possibilities of a feminist architecture inspired by the beguinages, Iris Handschin focuses on the rehabilitation of a former textile factory dating from the 1740s, outlining the contours of a truly democratic space.
“ Unfortunately, the ambiance is seen as a corrective factor to be dealt with. ”
“ Unfortunately, the ambiance is seen as a corrective factor to be dealt with. ”
The challenges of air in architecture encompass a wide range of considerations that can affect the shape of a building, its degree of openness, the proportion of voids and solids, or the implementation of specific technical solutions. To reconcile seemingly contradictory requirements, such as the tension between energy efficiency and natural ventilation, architects and engineers are redoubling their inventiveness. Air, due to its invisibility, invites us to create an atmosphere and to consider buildings in terms of breathability.
Marie-Sarah Adenis is a designer and co-founder of PILI, a company that develops biocoloring agents using microorganisms: an alternative to their petrochemical production. But the heart of her job is to harness the image of “microbes” to overcome the limitations of our imaginations and inject a touch of onirism into the dusty scientific narrative inherited from Pasteur.
“ Restoring a building does not mean maintaining, repairing or remaking it, it means restoring it to a complete state that may never have existed at any given time, according to Viollet-Le-Duc. ”
“ Restoring a building does not mean maintaining, repairing or remaking it, it means restoring it to a complete state that may never have existed at any given time, according to Viollet-Le-Duc. ”
Viollet-le-Duc is famous for restoring the spire of Notre-Dame, which had been knocked down in 1792. In the course of this construction project, he reinvented the statues of the portals and the Kings’ Gallery, which had been decimated during the Revolution, because, in his words: “Restoring an edifice does not mean maintaining, repairing or remaking it, it means re-establishing it in a complete state that may never have existed at a given moment.” Bérénice Gaussuin, PhD in architecture, whose book Viollet-le-Duc : La forge d’une théorie de la restauration par la pratique (Viollet-le-Duc: Forging a theory of restoration through practice) has just been published (CNRS Éditions), takes a look at the approach of this extraordinary restorer.
Through animation, installation, sculpture and painting, Victor Cord’homme reveals the complexity and tireless workings of an urban system over which humans are losing control. He works on the autonomy of his installations and exhibitions, whose behavior varies according to the audience, invited to interact yet powerless to do so.
“ Making the most out of urine in agriculture isn't a technological or technical issue, it's a matter of social organization. ”
“ Making the most out of urine in agriculture isn't a technological or technical issue, it's a matter of social organization. ”
Since urine is an inexhaustible ecological fertilizer, why not use it instead of chemical fertilizers that are expensive to produce? Designer Louise Raguet suggests bringing back to the fields what has been collected there. Her research with the LEESU laboratory (École des Ponts) has led her to develop a unique project: urine separation in the future Saint-Vincent de Paul district of Paris.
The French underground and aerial landscape is made up of approximately 910,000 km of drinking water distribution pipes, and over 1.4 million km of power lines. Indispensable in our daily lives, they are nonetheless invisible and increasingly questioned in the light of ecological and technological challenges that are transforming our territories. But can’t these infrastructures be seen as a heritage to be maintained and cared for?
Justine Emard is a visual artist. Her installations use AI to understand the living, exploring the boundaries between organic life and artificial intelligence. Bee swarms, encephalographic recordings and prehistoric paintings become learning supports for algorithms that, contrary to dystopian imaginations, generate new supra-hyper-organisms.
STREAM conducts researches to explore contemporary mutations. The lab investigates a number of contributions from different disciplinary fields and creative practices on the major contemporary issues in order to understand, in a transverse and collective way, their consequences for the architecture and urban planning of tomorrow. It brings together philosophers, sociologists, artists, engineers, biologists, economists, and architects to crystallize a kaleidoscopic and forward-looking vision of the various issues it addresses.
This theme explores the sustainability issues raised by the Anthropocene at the scale of buildings and urban environments, in all their material aspects, from design and construction to the uses to which they are put.
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For Daniel Buren, architecture is an open-air studio. In an exclusive interview with architect Philippe Chiambaretta, he talks about his site-specific work, where art and architecture meet, just like the Nuages Colorés that cover the scales of the 175 Haussmann glass roof.
Andrew Freear runs the Rural Studio program at Auburn School of Architecture (USA). He believes that schools of architecture have an ethical responsibility to train citizen architects who are locally committed to concrete projects and experientially connected to contexts and places. To design an inclusive city, the Studio adopts an experimental field approach, combining analysis of the territory’s endemic problems, understanding of residents’ needs and new construction techniques. Read the full interview published in STREAM 05!
Mathieu Arnoux, Professor at the University of Paris and Director of Studies at the EHESS, Isabelle Bensidoun, economist at the CEPII, Vincent Charlet, economist and founder of the Fabrique de l’Industrie and Liliana Doganova, sociologist and researcher at the CSI des Mines de Paris. This concluding conference looks at the social and economic dynamics associated with the exploitation of materials on a national and global scale. The war in Ukraine has revealed our dependence on our neighbours and reopened questions of sovereignty and self-sufficiency. France has been less affected by the Russian gas embargo than Germany, but the transition to renewable energies will not happen without the rare earths that we import mainly from China. The limits of globalisation seem to have been reached. What does this mean for our industry, our sectors and our economic policy? What role will the markets play, particularly the carbon market, in encouraging national and European materials?
With Marie Sarah Adenis, artist, Aurélie Mossé, research professor at ENSAD, and Simon Trancart, Head of Adaptative Laboratory Evolution at Ginkgo BioWorks. Wood is often referred to as a living material because it reacts to ambient humidity and develops a patina. However, when a tree is cut down to exploit its wood, it dies and ceases to photosynthesise. What other forms of living matter can we cultivate and grow to build and create, and what ethics should we apply? What does the future hold for organic materials that can regenerate rapidly or perhaps never die and continue to evolve as living matter? From the colourimetric properties of microbes to the use of algae to develop alternative chemical reactions to form cements and ceramics that emit less carbon, what possibilities does living matter offer us for rethinking creation?
Designing an inclusive city implies involving their residents in urban projects, but what is the role of architects and urban planners in this process? For Andrew Freear, the head of the Rural Studio program, they both have the ethical responsibility of getting locally involved via concrete projects. Architectural schools must thus take on training citizen architects by engaging them in learning by doing, and thus have them redevelop a deep connection with context and places, acting as neighbors and activists within communities in order to collectively carry out experimental projects that tangibly improve society and the environment.
The two Lebanese artists and filmmakers were awarded the 2017 Marcel Duchamp Award for Unconformities, a project currently on display at Hamburger Bahnhof in Berlin. This artwork, like their approach, is based on a methodology of investigation and excavation and aims to offer another reading of history and the traces of the past.
Nicolas Nova is a social anthropologist. Inspired by New Media Studies and design fiction, he contends that the future of design lies in recycling and reparation as well as reinventing forms and functions. Did you know that a used flip-flop could serve as a lighter?
The geographer and orientalist Augustin Berque revisits the polysemic dimension of the term “milieu,” and explains the distinction made by mesology—“the area of biology that deals with the relationships between the environments and organisms”—between “environment” and “milieu.” The reality of things differs depending on the environment of each species or culture, the object doesn’t exist in itself but according to its relationship with the subject. In this way, mesology goes much further than the subject/object dualism of modern science. Ontologically “trajective,” the environment is neither objective nor subjective, but firmly between the two theoretical subject/object centers. Berque takes the term “mediance,” meaning the dynamic coupling of the individual and their surroundings, from the Japanese “fūdo,” to which he adds “trajection,” a process that results in the “mediance” of human existence in its concrete surroundings. Taken as a whole, all human environments, distinct from the biosphere through their eco-techno-symbolic dimension, form the ecumene. For architecture, this implies a respect for history and the environment, without mimicking ancient forms, creating from the “mediance” of each place.
Larissa Fassler is a “Neo-Situationist” artist. By exploring places over the course of many hours, she gleans their ephemeral essence, which she then superimposes on the fixed urban master plan. The subjective maps thus generated highlight both urban narratives and history.
Maximum is a design studio that maximizes the value of waste; its material, its form and its engineering. Some materials are transformed in a semi-industrial process while others give birth to unique pieces, such as the glass walls of the Centre Pompidou caterpillar.
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