Search
|

Neo composites

  • Publish On 5 July 2024
  • Michael Gaultois, Xavier Baris, Mathieu Merlet Briand, Benoit Roman
  • 96 minutes

With Mathieu Merlet Briand, artist, Benoit Roman, research director at the CNRS, Xavier Baris from Kairos and Michael Gaultois, Chief Scientific Officer of Fairmat.

With the growing disenchantment of the public and designers alike with plastic, perceived as the offspring of the oil years and the symbol of a disposable world, the development of new materials that respond to contemporary challenges by proposing circular production schemes is long overdue. The Deeptech ecosystem is struggling to get off the ground in France, given the investment required. The government and the regions are encouraging research and entrepreneurial initiatives such as the FLOWER project to develop composites made from flax fibre, a plant widely grown in France. What are the neo-composites of tomorrow? What new mythologies do they invoke?

 

 

Bibliography

explore

Podcast

“ My research question was: How do tools for integrating biodiversity into urban and architectural projects contribute to shaping multi-species urban worlds? ”

Translating biodiversity

Léone-Alix Mazaud

Podcast

“ My research question was: How do tools for integrating biodiversity into urban and architectural projects contribute to shaping multi-species urban worlds? ”

Translating biodiversity

In this first episode, Léone revisits the genesis of her research topic and traces the evolution of her methodology. She adopts a “material semiotics” approach, focused on how biodiversity tools translate and make ecological knowledge perceptible. These tools are analyzed as “cosmograms,” according to John Tresch’s concept: objects designed to summarize the order of the world by materially organizing the relationships between humans and non-humans. But an examination of the diversity of these tools quickly reveals the difficulty in producing shared representations of biodiversity. This heterogeneity opens an investigation into the often implicit ways in which these tools shape our thinking and conceptions of the multi-species city.   Working with diversity: Operators sensitive to non-human life in urban and architectural projects In this series of four podcasts, we invite you to delve into the work of Léone, a researcher at the agency, who recently defended her CIFRE PhD thesis in Science and Technology Studies, supervised by Jérôme Denis at the Centre for the Sociology of Innovation (École des Mines, Université PSL). A series presented by Léone-Alix Mazaud and Jasmine Léonardon. Editing: Théa Lingrand.

Discover
Article

Reshaping myths to reveal pressing realities

Ashfika Rahman

Article

Reshaping myths to reveal pressing realities

Ashfika Rahman is a visual artist based in Bangladesh, who recently won the Future Generation Art Prize awarded by the PinchukArtCentre in Ukraine. Faced with the overwhelming power of information systems that are serving dominant narratives, she is working on creating alternative medium of expression, giving their voice back to marginalized communities in her homeland, particularly women. Through her art, Rahman questions myths, folk tales and widely spread prejudice that are still shaping our cultures and legitimating violence, adopting a contemporary and feminist lense. We met with her to discuss her recent work, Behula These Days where she brings together ancient crafts and new techniques to share the poignant and heart-wrenching experiences of women living in one of the most floodprone areas in Bangladesh.

Discover
Vidéo

Inhabiting Sentinel Landscapes

Matthieu Duperrex

Vidéo

Inhabiting Sentinel Landscapes

A philosopher and senior lecturer at the National School of Architecture of Marseille, Matthieu Duperrex explores ‘sentinel landscapes’—polluted soils, engineered rivers, industrial port zones—from a decolonial, multidisciplinary perspective attentive to the various ways of narrating the damaged world we have inherited. He regards these sites both as places of warning and as spaces of knowledge.

Discover
Podcast

“ Architecture has a unique relationship with the transformation of reality: it is, in a way, atlastic. ”

Architecture is a political practice

Manuel Bello Marcano

Podcast

“ Architecture has a unique relationship with the transformation of reality: it is, in a way, atlastic. ”

Architecture is a political practice

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.

Discover
Vidéo

"For an open architecture"

Jean-Baptiste de Froment

Vidéo

"For an open architecture"

On the occasion of its integration into the Paris Sciences et Lettres (PSL) university consortium, the École nationale supérieure d’architecture de Paris-Malaquais is publishing a manifesto that asserts its institutional positioning. Far more than a mere text, this manifesto lays the foundations for a committed academic vision, emphasizing the urgent need to train architects engaged in transforming the ways we inhabit the world. Structured around twelve key concepts, it is intended as a compass to guide the school’s pedagogical and strategic choices, in alignment with the 2025–2029 National Strategy for Architecture. In this interview, its director, Jean-Baptiste de Froment, reflects on the values driving this project and on how the school positions itself as a proactive agent of thought and action within the contemporary architectural landscape.

Discover
Vidéo

Beautiful like an encounter on the glass roof of colored clouds

Daniel Buren, Philippe Chiambaretta

Vidéo

Beautiful like an encounter on the glass roof of colored clouds

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.

Discover
Article

Capturing the Cityscape Through Photography

Émilie d'Orgeix, Corinne Feïss-Jehel, Pierre-Jérôme Jehel

Article

Capturing the Cityscape Through Photography

Over the span of several months, students from GOBELINS Paris scouted La Défense, examining the iconic business district from the fresh perspective of urban metabolism. As part of a documentary workshop led by Pierre-Jérôme Jehel and Laetitia Guillemin (GOBELINS) and designed in partnership with researchers from the City-Metabolism Chair at PSL University, some thirty students explored this territory. They did so by treating it not as a mere backdrop but as a living organism, traversed by flows, tensions, and rhythms, using photography as a tool for revelation. Their projects, located at the crossroads of artistic creation and research, unveil an alternative reading of this mineral space, between invisible flows and underlying tensions. Both sensitive and rigorous, this inquiry is chronicled here by Corinne Feïss Jehel (EPHE-PSL), Pierre-Jérôme Jehel, and Émilie d’Orgeix (EPHE-PSL) as part of a research project conducted by the City-Metabolism Chair (which is financially supported by PCA-STREAM, Artelia, and Groupama Immobilier).

Discover
Article

Educating Citizen Architects: for a meaningful architecture

Andrew Freear

Article

Educating Citizen Architects: for a meaningful architecture

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!

Discover