Producing Architecture

  • Publish On 11 January 2017
  • Bertrand Julien-Laferrière

What is the impact of current economic transformations (the financialization and the acceleration of the economy, the increasing value of intangible assets) on the way architecture is produced? In only ten years, a massive influx of private capital has transformed existing buildings into fast-moving liquid financial assets. On the contrary, the production process of new projects has slowed down considerably and become much more complex, all the while the resources of the government and local authorities are dwindling. As a result, a process of devolution and transfer of architectural production to the private sector is occurring, and it is probably irreversible. In France, cultural and architectural needs were seen as being legitimately addressed only by public contracts due to the country’s Jacobin tradition (i.e., a centralized State tradition). Private commissions must gradually emancipate from the tutelage of the public sector; to achieve this, private decision-makers must increase their knowledge of architecture and architects and understand that design is at the heart of the process of value creation.

Bertrand Julien-Laferrière graduated from École Centrale, Paris, University of California, Berkeley, and Insead. He is Head of Real Estate at Ardian, a leading Alternative Asset Manager in Europe.

How does time impact architectural production and quality? How are production processes and organization models adapting to the acceleration of time and will they eventually influence the architectural product? What are the cultural and professional responses to this paradoxical situation of having to manage an increasingly complex context against a backdrop of accelerating consumption and information? How can development approaches be made sustainable when the Zeitgeist is to network dissemination?

Architecture, in between finance and politics

Today, we find that production times in our Western societies tend to become longer and longer: the administrative and regulatory framework is expanding due to the concern of better protecting citizens, the city, democracy, and the planet. The discussions on participation, the stages of consultation, the influence of community associations and lobbies increasingly mark the production process of urban design and construction. Electoral deadlines make the launch of major operations either possible or impossible even though politics should be concerned with the public interest on the long run, going well beyond political timing considerations.

Local authorities set the pace of urban developments; urban authorities and their technical departments undertake to control the development of supply and sometimes even to regulate the market. They aim to develop their urban spaces and, at the same time, to control them.

At the same time, money flows ever more rapidly, and buildings that had had one, or possibly two, owners over one hundred years, are now changing hands several times in a single decade.

Investment funds, with their ever higher financial resources, form and dissolve, invest in a country or another, in an asset class or another, move the sliders of time to suit their cash-flow simulations and return on investment calculations.

Bibliography

explore

Article
Article

Podcast transcript: urban metabolism, at the heart of the matter

In urban planning and geography, the concept of metabolism is frequently discussed. This organicist metaphor likens a territory to a body, traversed by flows of materials and energy that link it to its environment. From a quantitative perspective, these flows can be measured over time and space to assess what a territory consumes, processes, and produces. However, a qualitative approach is equally crucial, examining the political and social trade-offs that shape urban metabolisms. With this in mind, we spoke with two researchers, Clément Dillenseger and Pierre Desvaux, who have explored the waste sector to analyze the socio-technical infrastructures that underpin metabolism and the imaginaries that shape its perception.

Discover
Podcast

“ En architecture, le sonore demeure une dimension à la fois floue et insaisissable. Il échappe au dessin et au plan, et pourtant, c’est lui qui fait vibrer l’espace, qui le rend habitable et mémorable.  ”

Podcast

“ En architecture, le sonore demeure une dimension à la fois floue et insaisissable. Il échappe au dessin et au plan, et pourtant, c’est lui qui fait vibrer l’espace, qui le rend habitable et mémorable.  ”


Sound, the Great Forgotten Dimension of Architectural Practice

Carlotta Daro co-led, together with Nicolas Tixier, the Radio Utopia project that animated the French Pavilion at the Venice Biennale in 2023. She is now part of the Gramazio Kohler research group, which focuses on the contribution of digital technologies and new materials to architectural design. There, she leads a research project dedicated to developing virtual reality tools enriched with acoustic simulations, designed to support architects throughout their creative process. This work paves the way for a constructive approach in which sound—too often considered primarily as a nuisance—moves beyond measurement and mitigation to become a perceptual and experiential factor.

Discover
Podcast

“ Artificial intelligence is revolutionizing our relation to history, giving us access to previously indecipherable archives. ”

Using AI to tell history

Raphaël Doan

Podcast

“ Artificial intelligence is revolutionizing our relation to history, giving us access to previously indecipherable archives. ”


Using AI to tell history

On February 10 and 11, France hosted the Summit for Action on Artificial Intelligence, bringing together international companies and heads of state to identify the potential and limits (notably environmental) of this tool. This is an opportunity for us to discuss 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. Read here the transcription of our interview with Raphaël Doan

Discover
Vidéo
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
Podcast

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

Podcast

“ 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.

Discover
Vidéo

Björn Geldhof

Vidéo

Culture as a weapon

In this exclusive interview, Björn Geldhof, director of the PinchuckArtCentre in Kyiv, looks at the evolution of the centre’s cultural programming since the outbreak of war in Ukraine. From an institutional space whose primary role was to open up the country to the world, the centre has evolved into a platform for committed and activist research, carrying the voice of Ukraine throughout Europe. By using art to document the conflict, the PinchukArtCentre uses a factual approach to raise awareness in the spheres of opinion and decision-making, thus affirming its role as the country’s ‘artistic arm’.  

Discover
Article
Article

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.

Discover
Podcast

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

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