Biodiversity
“ Making the most out of urine in agriculture isn't a technological or technical issue, it's a matter of social organization. ”
“ Making the most out of urine in agriculture isn't a technological or technical issue, it's a matter of social organization. ”
Recycling urine to fertilize the soil
Since urine is an inexhaustible ecological fertilizer, why not use it instead of chemical fertilizers that are expensive to produce? Designer Louise Raguet suggests bringing back to the fields what has been collected there. Her research with the LEESU laboratory (École des Ponts) has led her to develop a unique project: urine separation in the future Saint-Vincent de Paul district of Paris.
La Source Vive
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La Source Vive is a new concert hall dedicated to chamber music located in Évian. The result of a collaboration between architects Patrick Bouchain and Philippe Chiambaretta. Its conch-like form is the outcome of sensory experimentation and scientific analysis aimed at achieving exceptional acoustics while blending seamlessly into its scenic surroundings. The project is housed by the Évian Resort and embodies Aline Foriel-Destezet’s commitment to promoting music. Born of her desire to support the creation of an architectural complex featuring a unique concert hall in service of a major music project, La Source Vive will be located at the Mélèzes site, in the close vicinity of La Grange au Lac, another iconic music venue designed thirty years ago by Patrick Bouchain. Together, they will form an exceptional architectural complex dedicated to music—two complementary facilities within the same institution working together to provide a complete, open, and supportive musical experience.
175 Haussmann
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The restructuring of the 175 boulevard Haussmann is the opportunity to become part of a resilient and innovative city, capable of renewing itself. PCA-STREAM is bringing together two separate buildings to create a coherent office complex, focused on well-being and collaborative working. A contemporary and emblematic elevation, in glass scales, practically and symbolically links the buildings and eras. The complex has been chosen as the headquarters of the Lazard bank.
Stream Building
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Covivio, Hines France, and PCA-STREAM have come together to create the Stream Building, a manifesto building located at the heart of the new Clichy-Batignolles district that integrates almost fifteen years of research by Stream Lab into innovations addressing the key challenges facing the cities of tomorrow. Circular by design, the Stream Building is a relational and productive hub that will energize this new urban center within the Greater Paris area by concentrating all the activities associated with a vibrant urban life.
15 Laborde
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Located near the Saint-Lazare train station, these new-generation offices in a former military barracks combine the best of two architectural heritages. They offer a comfortable and prestigious workplace, turned towards nature and the well-being of its users, French law firm Gide-Loyrette-Nouel. The building's heritage is magnified and remodeled, enhancing its attractiveness and competitiveness, while helping to write a new page in the history of Paris's ever-changing urban fabric.
“ What can we change in the way we inhabit the land to preserve the soil as an environment? ”
“ What can we change in the way we inhabit the land to preserve the soil as an environment? ”
Soil as an environment, property as an inhabiting capacity
Elissa Al Saad is an architect and laureate of the 2023 Palladio Fellowships for her thesis on soil as an environment. By comparing different possible forms of land appropriation, she raises the issue of preserving land resources in relation to ownership. The aim is to think of property as a support for a way of inhabiting that considers land as a common good.
“ What will Paris be like under 50°C? How can we postpone this scenario and be better prepared for it? ”
“ What will Paris be like under 50°C? How can we postpone this scenario and be better prepared for it? ”
Paris at 50°C
Our dense, mineral-rich capital is ill-suited to the extreme heat we’ll increasingly have to cope with. So what adaptation strategies can we implement? This is what we asked to Alexandre Florentin, Paris councillor responsible for resilience and climate issues. He chaired the “Paris at 50 degrees” mission, which delivered its report a few months ago: what fields of action for architects and urban designers?
MOCO — Contemporary art center
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A new institution for the arts in Montpellier, the MOCO brings together the Panacée and the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts of Montpellier Méditerranée Métropole around the Montcalm Hotel. This headquarters for contemporary creation aims to federate the art scene in Southern France, and to break with cultural centralism, while at the same time avoiding a repetition of the “Bilbao” recipe of the spectacular object. It explores the possibilities for the transformation of the city through art in line with an organic model that rises to the contemporary challenges of regenerating historic cores and recycling existing architecture. The MoCo is in phase with a younger generation’s aspirations towards collective appropriation, co-production and the idea of making do with and together.
PCA-STREAM Office
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PCA-STREAM takes its inspiration from its research on new workspaces, which are gathered in the second issue of the Stream book-magazine, “After Office,” in order to design its premises in the Marais, on the site of a former printing house. Designed as an ecosystem that brings together a variety of spaces for the use of a large multidisciplinary team, this place is the spatial embodiment of PCA-STREAM as well as a manifesto of its innovative vision of the work space.
Exotic trees in the City
Botanist Serge Muller, a professor emeritus at the French National Museum of Natural History, is a specialist of “invasive alien species.” He discusses the concept of “nativeness” and lays out the contours of a policy opening cities to new tree species that could become important allies in coping with global warming. Based on an interview conducted in partnership with Coloco.
Root gardening
To understand the living, you need to understand the invisible. This is what Véronique Mure, a botanist specializing in Mediterranean landscapes, is convinced of. By focusing on the relationship that people have with plants, she raises awareness on the importance of soil and roots and invites us to take care of them, like gardeners.
“ Every citizen on the planet is a gardener. ”
“ Every citizen on the planet is a gardener. ”
The gardener's intelligence
Gilles Clément coined the concept of the ‘planetary garden’ which invites everyone to take care of the Earth as they would a garden. Having all too often been confronted with the sheer ignorance of how ecosystems and the living world operate, he, therefore, proposes creating a Ministry of Knowledge to lift us out of the ‘Stupidocene.’ Read transcript A PCA-STREAM production Coordination: Jasmine Léonardon Editing: Mattéo Caranta Music: Alexandre Desplat
Posthuman architecture
Ariane Lourie Harrison, architect, and professor at Yale University tells us about posthuman architecture, a performative and interactive approach to the built environment that addresses multiple species. Scientific technologies have allowed us to increase our knowledge about species (including microbes and bacterias) and establish new ways of communicating with them. This new relationship between human and nature is essential in an architectural context where “greenwashing” often doesn’t actually respect biodiversity and the needs of animal and non-human entities.
Training Citizen Architects to Serve a Community
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.
Collaborating with situations
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.
Design: Reparation
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?
From "Mediance" to Places
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.
An Attempt to Drain Places
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.
Maximizing reuse, minimizing transformation
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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stream voices
Eager to share more generously the results of its collaborations and research, PCA-STREAM publishes STREAM VOICES, its online magazine!
Discover Stream Voices