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?
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.
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Aurélie Mossé is a designer, researcher and head of the Soft Matters research group at the Ecole des Arts Décoratifs. Using micro-organisms, she is experimenting with the manufacture of innovative materials that are less costly in terms of fossil fuels or non-renewable resources. By producing calcite, bacteria could become allies in the creation of solid building materials.
At its core, the campus embodies an enduring quest for an ideal. Its form is fraught with tensions inherited from a long history that remain relevant even as it adapts to contemporary challenges. Driven by a race to maximize their appeal, campuses are transforming into architectural showcases, competing with corporate headquarters in embodying new values and attracting top talent. Their structures and functions are evolving to meet the shifting needs of education and society. By embracing the archetypes of the agora and the garden—the original dichotomy of campuses—these bastions of knowledge are forming the contours of a new era in higher education.
La Vie à l’œuvre (Life in the Making), a collective of researchers in the natural sciences, humanities and social sciences, as well as artists, was set up at the Université Paris Sciences & Lettres in 2014 to explore interdisciplinary collective intelligence around the theme of the living. Functioning as an incubator of ideas, they explore the potential of living beings, particularly via experiments between art and science. A Stream 05 – New Intelligences article to discover!
France has the 4th largest forest area in Europe, yet 40% of its timber is imported. At a time when Google’s London headquarters, designed in 2016 with a solid wood structure, has still not been delivered, and when the tallest wooden tower is due to be built in Tokyo in 2028, reaching a height of 100 metres, where does France stand in relation to wood? The RE2020, through the dynamic life cycle analysis, encourages the use of bio-sourced materials to promote the storage of biogenic carbon in buildings. The SNBC is explicitly banking on this sector to achieve its 2050 targets. However, the Paris Fire Brigade doctrine published in 2021 greatly complicates its use in architecture. How can these contradictions be overcome?
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.
Collective intelligence has become key to understanding and acting upon the complexity of the contemporary world. But how can the conditions for its advent be brought about? Originating in PSL, the “Life in the Making” collective, which brings together researchers in natural sciences, in the humanities, as well as artists, has been exploring this dialogue between intelligences around the theme of the living since 2014. By operating through a flexible framework, the collective has developed a praxis of interdisciplinary collective intelligence—all the while establishing new insights on life, in particular through experimentations between art and science.