Research into the emergence of a metropolitan architectural language. Characterized by the pursuit of ecological exemplarity, this vernacular architecture would express itself in the different territories of the metropolis through a set of details that would constitute an identity.
PROJECT PRESENTATION
An angled downspout, peeking out from the barely-completed facade of a social housing project in Raincy. A prefabricated concrete cornice, atop a tower just delivered in La Chapelle. A handcrafted wooden post supports the framework of the new village hall in La Norville. Concave curves of limestone enveloping recently invested apartments in the VIth arrondissement. Delicately curved spines on the facade of a social and cultural center inaugurated in Asnières.
What links these recent astonishments?
The ecological crisis naturally favors production that is rooted in its context and localized. Many architects today are taking the path of a "new vernacular" to create buildings, far from the metropolises, that are just right for the places where they are set up, and that suggest, through their anchorage in a localized history, their ecological exemplarity. But while a-metropolitan territories seem to naturally allow for the emergence of environmental architecture, we must ask ourselves: how does metropolitan architecture also develop a specific relationship with its environment?
Since concern for "Gaia" doesn't stop at the borders of ring roads, could it be that, in the face of the climate emergency, architects working in cities are developing a "metropolitan vernacular"? The aim of this research project is to look for signs of an environmental architectural language within the city's density.
To put this intuition to the test, we'll be tracing the trail of constructional astonishments, delving into their material, social and cultural depths. Based on an ethnography of a dozen or so details of projects delivered in Greater Paris over the past decade, selected for their apparent dissonance with the generic city, we will use drawings, archives and interviews with the architects, engineers and craftsmen who worked on their development to dissect the chains of actions and choices that led to their production. To understand the technical conditions and ethical ambitions of these assemblages, we'll be following little stories, mapping the twists and turns of architecture. For in a territory of density, it is perhaps through the manipulation of the imaginary, of the signs and meanings associated with the project, that architects' concerns for the ecological emergency are expressed.
PROJECT LEADERS
Architectural critic Margaux DARRIEUS holds a doctorate in architecture and is a lecturer at Ensa Bretagne, a member of the ACS UMR AUSser 3329 research laboratory and an associate member of Grief. Since 2011, she has also been a journalist on the editorial staff of the specialist magazine AMC. It is in these multiple venues and in a variety of formats (articles, exhibition curating, teaching, research) that she deploys her critical activity, questioning the ways in which architecture is made and the ways in which architects are, in the face of contemporary socio-environmental issues.
