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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

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"For an open architecture"

Jean-Baptiste de Froment

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"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.

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Capturing the Cityscape Through Photography

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

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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).

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“ A catastrophe is when a belief or certitude suddenly collapses. From its ruins, narrative, political, economic and ecological utopias can be reborn. ”

Can new narratives arise from ruins?

Raphaëlle Guidée

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“ A catastrophe is when a belief or certitude suddenly collapses. From its ruins, narrative, political, economic and ecological utopias can be reborn. ”

Can new narratives arise from ruins?

Raphaëlle Guidée is a specialist in narrative representations of economic, environmental and societal collapse. For over 10 years, she has analyzed the narratives surrounding Detroit’s bankruptcy in order to understand how an apparent ruin of capitalism can inspire discourses of domination or resistance. In La ville d’après : Détroit, une enquête narrative [The Aftermath City: Detroit, a narrative investigation] (Flammarion), rather than focusing on fictions, she seeks out testimonies and concrete stories, believing that modern times don’t need new narratives. We simply need alternative narratives. Read the transcription of the podcast.

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Using AI to tell history — podcast transcription

Raphaël Doan

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Using AI to tell history — podcast transcription

Read our discussion on the subject of generative AI with Raphaël Doan, a specialist in the sciences of Antiquity and author of the uchronia Si Rome n’avait pas chuté (If Rome hadn’t fallen), an essay imagining, with the help of AI, what might have happened if the Industrial Revolution had taken place under the Roman Empire. Through this experiment, fascinating possibilities for historical and archaeological research are outlined, as AI facilitates the processing of archives, the translation of lost languages and the deciphering of burnt texts.

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Matthieu Duperrex

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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.

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Educating Citizen Architects: for a meaningful architecture

Andrew Freear

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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!

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Podcast transcription: Raphaëlle Guidée

Raphaëlle Guidée

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Podcast transcription: Raphaëlle Guidée

Raphaëlle Guidée is a specialist in narrative representations of economic, environmental and societal collapse. For over 10 years, she has analyzed the narratives surrounding Detroit’s bankruptcy in order to understand how an apparent ruin of capitalism can inspire discourses of domination or resistance. In La ville d’après : Détroit, une enquête narrative [The Aftermath City: Detroit, a narrative investigation] (Flammarion), rather than focusing on fictions, she seeks out testimonies and concrete stories, believing that modern times don’t need new narratives. We simply need alternative narratives. Read the transcription of her podcast below.

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

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Manuel Bello Marcano

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“ 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.

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