Architecture & Landscape

Presentation of the ongoing studies at the LACTH research laboratory. Understanding how research is illustrated in the « Innovation Model » project in particular (see description below), and how it can lead to future theses.

In France, at the turn of the 1960s and 1970s, the « Modèles Innovation » (Innovation Models) set up a laboratory for housing: social housing with an experimental, innovative and qualitative character. Confronted with transformations, obsolescence, degradation or simply discredit, these social housing often suffer the same fate as the mass architectures on whose criticism they were built. From the points of view of critical history, architectural analysis and the expertise of heritage values, we wish to evoke these Innovation Models » and their future by showing how technical and typo-morphological patterns were envisaged, the different transformations they underwent and the preservation perspectives that open for these architectures of change.

1950–1990: Radio towers, monuments of cold war Europe
Working with history in a corpus. Integrating infrastructure architecture into the architectural canon.
This presentation aims to introduce the research around the architecture of radio towers, built between 1950 and 1990 as a comparative study between the French and British contexts. Around four key methodology parts, it will tell the story of the research initiated in 2018 as a master’s thesis and pursued in a co-supervised PhD between the University of Lille (ENSAPL) and Université of Kent (KSAP).
Pioneering research: What’s the origin of a research? Where is the state-of-the-art when almost nothing pre-exists the research? What methodology to apply? What relevant theory to work on?
• Corpus methodology: How to establish a corpus of building? How to work on a corpus of building?
• The relevance of a case study: Between opportunities and interest, how to select a case study?
• The value of research: How to communicate the value of research outside academia? After the PhD, what opportunities this research can create?

After the Second World War, the swift development of new components of the finishings profoundly transformed the world of architecture. Pushed by the new requirements of comfort, the art to build quickly became an art to master the constructed environments, capable of offering users quality ranges of atmospheres adapted to every situation of life. Floor coverings, treatment of false ceilings via all the diversity of the glass-making products conceived at that time: this intervention suggests showing how these elements which populate even today the commonness of our everyday life, served to produce new architectures.

The analysis of the production of open spaces within the framework of the innovation plan programs produces contrasting results. On the one hand, research shows to what extent these projects had an ambition to create an attractive, stimulating and structuring landscape at the scale of new towns in particular, in the form of vast green networks. On the other hand, the examination of actual achievements shows a poor record because the landscape projects have only been partially implemented and then not very functional. The public authorities’ response has been, rather than taking these projects to a more advanced degree of completion, to continually « re-qualify » these incomplete achievements, often with the effect of causing them to lose what little value they still could have, in particular through inappropriate management of a tree heritage which is constantly under constraint. Under these conditions, should not the recurring inability of public authorities to act substantially on public spaces at least find its compensation in a process of supposed inaction, to see plants, animals, and humans over time and the resources, take full control of their urban environment? This contribution, by basing an activist and prospective proposal on scientific findings from research, will illustrate an open approach of criticism adjusted to these complex objects that are public spaces living in the city.

Urban Form as Field of Experiments – Budapest’s prefab housing estates. In most post-socialist countries public housing estates were centrally planned, soviet norms regulated everything and the usage of big prefab panels was mandatory during the two fifteen-year long mass housing period, between 1960 and 1990. As consequence, experiments and actual values are more related to urban scale, to urban form, to open space than residential building technology or architecture. The presentation focuses on Budapest’s case studies analysing the urban design of several housing estates, their contemporary conditions, and the chance for renewal.

As part of this Summer School « Architecture & Landscape: For a Sustainable 21ˢᵗ Century Built from the 20ᵗʰ Century Heritage », you will be introduced to the results of the study carried out on the Innovation Models of the residence la Salamandre in Villeneuve d’Ascq. The idea is to demonstrate the importance of taking into account, on a case-by-case basis, occupancy variables, and inhabitants’ energy behavior, in the formulation of scenarios (or hypotheses) for energy rehabilitation intervention.

The goal of this course is to expose the conceptual, formal and communicational aspects of a scientific poster’s conception. The students will have an overview of the methodological stages necessary for the creation of this type of document, exploring its potentialities as well as its limits. These different stages will consist in the definition and selection of information relevant to the subject of research and the range of questions it raises; the instuments for a graphic, visual and textual setup and the balance between these elements; the ways of addressing the potential reader. The outcome of this course is to apprehend a certain number of tools and competencies that would serve the students in order to produce a poster which will expose in a clear and coherent way the contents of the research project, and will also be an efficient manner of communication with the public.

Methodology of the architectural project, with regard to innovation models.

See description of the Scientific Research Project below.