From ideas to process-projects

This category regards the existing territory as a primary resource: landscapes, traces of past uses, everyday architecture, obsolete infrastructure and ecological heritage. The idea is not so much to preserve as it is to reuse and transform the already there, revealing its hidden potential with a minimum of material and energy resources. These strategies explore recycling, height increase, changes of use and reversibility; they also adapt building regulations, planning rights and land-use tools to enable these reinterpretations. They open up possibilities for alternative uses, temporary occupations and reuse, whilst ensuring quality and safety, in order to build something new from what already exists.

1 / Re-embedding territories

Introducing ecological resources into re-use. How to anchor re-using processes into ecological traces and natural heritage (former agricultural practices, water cycles, biodiversity…)? The idea is to re-vitalise this heritage, to make it visible in contemporary projects, and to transform territories into living supports of memory, experimentation and collective ecological adaptation.

2 / Re-coding typologies

Opening up transformative ways of re-use. Experiment with minimal, reversible interventions that require few material resources, and capable of extending the life of existing buildings and their structures. Re-coding building typologies by adding new uses, or simple spatial or technical features, which transform the ways of inhabiting, working and sharing spaces without resorting to major demolition work.