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Soil

  • Publish On 24 June 2024
  • Emmanuelle Déchelette, Lucie Ponard, Thomas Gaudron, Jean-Claude Morel
  • 82 minutes

Although soil is used as a building material in many parts of the world, it has often been regarded as a waste product in France in recent decades, with little use being made of excavated soil. However, its thermal and hygrometric properties, its extremely low carbon footprint when used raw, its abundance and the natural variations in colour that it offers in every region make it a rich and inspiring material for today’s architects and designers. How can we adapt our building techniques to bring this material into line with contemporary requirements, and get rid of the vision of primitive housing that it still evokes for many people?

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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.

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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

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.

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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!

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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.

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Article

Podcast transcription: Raphaëlle Guidée

Raphaëlle Guidée

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.

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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

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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.

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Vidéo

Culture as a weapon

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’.  

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