Philosopher, professor at the National School of Architecture of Paris-La Villette and at the Special School of Architecture, she directs the Gerphau laboratory and the PhiLAU international network. Silver Medal of the Academy of Architecture in 2005, she is chevalier de la Légion d’honneur since 2014, co-founder and member of ARENA (Architectural Research Network) and the magazine "L'esprit des villes". Through her publications and research, she creates bridges between architecture and philosophy to address the issue of living and relationships between nature and artifact.
Philosopher, researcher and architecture school teacher Chris Younès advocates the implementation of “regenerative synergies” to learn to collaborate, respect the dynamics of nature and seek a new form of harmony – not simply aesthetic but also ethical and political – to improve the manufacture of inhabited environments. An attitude advocated by many architectural researchers!
Philosopher and architecture school faculty member Chris Younès advocates implementing “regenerative synergies” so that “building” can stop going hand in hand with “destroying.” We need to learn to collaborate and observe the dynamics of nature, but also work towards a new form of harmony—not only in esthetic, but also in ethical and political terms—in order to improve the construction of inhabited environments.
As the living increasingly emerges as the conceptual horizon of urban production, philosopher Chris Younès analyses the dynamics of an architecture of environments. Whether biotope or architecture, environments are the product of the interactions that constitute them and continuously transform them. Considering environments in this way allows us to emphasize “the in-between,” with every metabolism being both self-organized and porous, operating within a system of relationships. In this way, it insists upon the fecundity of the “reliances” that exist between city and nature as the condition for a symbolic reestablishment of urban environments through an increased coexistence with nature. Developing urban environments’ capacities for resilience requires that we no longer step outside of our environment, as modern thinking would encourage, but rather drives us to understand and establish alliances with the environment, with the goal of revealing, managing, and revitalizing it. In this way, we will see the reemergence of new ways of thinking and doing, in order to “renature” both architecture and the city.
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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Eager to share more generously the results of its collaborations and research, PCA-STREAM publishes STREAM VOICES, its online magazine!