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Life cycles

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The potential of the night

PCA-STREAM

Article

The potential of the night

Once a sanctuary for dreams and imagination, nighttime has now been relegated to the mere role of a utilitarian prelude to daytime. Nocturnal realms possess an alchemical power capable of transfiguring our perceptions. However, when viewed through the lens of urban uses, the night also exacerbates inequalities and raises questions about the possibility of achieving an urban night that is accessible to everyone. Exploring the range of possibilities associated with the night reveals it as a space-time where complex interactions are woven that could be revitalized through a chronotopic and inclusive architecture.

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Reusing turbine blades : the winds of change

Minh Nguyễn, Yoann Malinge

Vidéo

Reusing turbine blades : the winds of change

The growth in energy consumption and the obsolescence of our infrastructures suggest that by 2030, we’ll have a stock of 60,000 tonnes of end-of-life wind turbines per year. To absorb this material on an industrial scale, we need to invent new ways of producing, consuming and building. With this in mind, the La Paletière project aims to reuse turbine blades – composite materials with multiple properties – by turning them into roofing elements.

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Working with living matter

Aurélie Mossé

Vidéo

Working with living matter

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.

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360

  • Paris
  • 2025
  • Work in progress
  • Paris
  • 2025
  • Work in progress
360

360 is part of the dynamic revitalization of the Plateau district and the future prospect of a pacification of the ring road. The project rehabilitates three office buildings from the 1980s that no longer meet current needs and expectations. Its remarkable location and accessibility, at the head of the ring road, at the border of Vanves and Paris, invited an ambitious rehabilitation to develop comfortable, efficient and innovative spaces, while adapting the building to contemporary environmental issues.

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Vidéo

Is the city going round in circles?

Léonie Debrabandère

Vidéo

Is the city going round in circles?

Léonie Debrabandère is the Director of the WAAO, Lille’s architecture center, and curator of the exhibition “La ville tourne en rond?” How can we get away from anthropocentric, productivist logics and create a city that self-regulates, regenerates and recycles itself? The exhibition takes us on a semantic and tangible exploration of the circular city, allowing anyone to implement re-usable solutions on all scales.

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Related Contents

Article

Training Citizen Architects to Serve a Community

Andrew Freear

Article

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.

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Collaborating with situations

Joana Hadjithomas & Khalil Joreige

Vidéo

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.

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Article

Design: Reparation

Nicolas Nova

Article

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?

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Article

From "Mediance" to Places

Augustin Berque

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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.

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An Attempt to Drain Places

Larissa Fassler

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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.

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Maximizing reuse, minimizing transformation

Armand Bernoud

Vidéo

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!

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