Geneva Seminar 2016

CONTEXT

 

The COP21 in December 2015 in Paris concluded with a historic agreement on the measures to be taken in the face of global warming. It specifically pointed to the urban challenge as one of the major projects of the 21st century. Life sciences, experimental and exact sciences, and human and social sciences are collectively responding to this task by developing a new gnoseological and action-oriented project. The disciplines linked to spatial planning – architecture, town planning, construction and landscaping – cannot remain on the sidelines of this development that is often qualified as a “paradigm shift”: data, concepts and working methods evolve rapidly to meet urgent needs. A central issue is now emerging in laboratories, workshops and training places. It concerns the management of resources which are becoming scarcer at the same rate as the human ecological footprint increases. Make no mistake: fresh water, land, energy and raw materials are not just quantitative data to be “saved” when building our living environment. They are also complex value systems, indicators of life and well-being. In other words, urban civilization is called upon to invent new relationships between its ways of life and planetary resources.

 

OBJECTIVES

 

The interdisciplinary research programme The Eco-Century Project invites (fundamental, applied) researchers to reframe concerns, invent methods of investigation and formulate possible answers to the complex questions that resource management brings about, directed not only at the production of inhabited space but also at its customs. Conceiving architecture, the city and landscapes through the prism of planetary resources amounts to questioning all environments – past, present and future – with new hypotheses, transformed vocabularies and devices that are innovative and perhaps still in their beginnings. Nevertheless, these “clumsy beginnings” of creation have always accompanied change and innovation, and many regard this prism as representative of the future of our intentions and creations.

 

THE PROGRAMME IS BASED ON THREE MAIN QUESTIONS:

• How can we reconcile the hopes of a new life close to nature with our humanist project? How to transform the principles, manifestos and programmes which inspired the modernity of the 20th century into driving forces of the ecological transition? What are the characteristics of the new “sustainable utopias”?
• How to orient and adapt the intelligence of architecture and urban planning to better respond to the increasingly acute and frequent disasters of our time? How can the disciplines of spatial transformation be renewed thanks to a project defined by the humanitarian emergencies of the 21st century?
• If the 20th century started with a minimal response to social needs for a dignified life qualified under the term “Existenzminimum”, what will be the 21st century’s response to our needs for harmonious, measured and optimal relations with the environment? What will the architectural, urban and landscape qualities of our Existenzoptimum be?

 

WATCH THE VIDEOS

 

Programme

 

• Presentation of the seminar day
  Panos MANTZIARAS, Braillard Architects Foundation
• Short speech
  Antonio HODGERS, State Councilor in charge of the Planning, Housing and Energy Department (DALE), Republic and canton of Geneva

 

Part 1

 

• EMERGENCY SHELTERS IN GENEVA
  Philippe BONHÔTE, Architect, professor, Joint Master of Architecture, HES/GE-HEPIA
  Ivan VUARAMBON, Architect, project coordinator at the DDC
• LIVING TOMORROW IN A LOW-DENSITY CITY
  Nicolas TIXIER, Architect, professor, National School of Architecture of Grenoble
  Jennifer BUYCK, Architect, lecturer, Urban Planning Institute of Grenoble

 

Part 2

 

• SUSTAINABLE AND RESILIENT URBAN INFRASTRUCTURE – INSIGHT FROM CASE STUDIES
  Katharina SCHNEIDER ROSS, Deputy Executive Director – Global Infrastructure Basel
  Marco GROSSMANN, Director Implementation Services – Global Infrastructure Basel
• ATLAS PROJECT – SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT ATLAS FOR THE ALPINE SPACE
  Peter DROEGE, Architect, professor, Liechtenstein Institute for Strategic Development

 

Part 3

 

• ARCHITECTURAL ATLAS OF CIRCULAR ECONOMY
  Grégoire BIGNIER, Architect engineer, researcher, LIAT Laboratory, National School of Architecture Paris-Malaquais
  Peggy GARCIA, Architect, postgraduate EPFL – Associate assistant professor, National School of Architecture Paris Malaquais
• SCENARIOS FOR A COLLABORATIVE CITY: SUSTAINABLE UTOPIA OF THE POLYCENTRIC RUHR REGION
  Alexander SCHMIDT, Architect, professor – Institute of City Planning + Urban Design, University Duisburg-Essen
  With the team : Marielly Casanova, Aurelio David, Sonja Hellali-Milani, Janka Lengyel, Fabian Schnabel, Minh Chau Tran

 

Part 4

 

• DENSUISSE – PROSPECTIVE RESEARCH ON THE DENSIFICATION OF THE SWISS URBAN SPACE:
  • ALPS – PROTOTYPES FOR THE ALPINE CITY-TERRITORY
  • Paola VIGANO, Architect, Professor – Laboratory of urbanism, EPFL
  • METROPOLITAN COUNTRYSIDE – LAKE GENEVA
  • Milica TOPALOVIC, Architect, assistant professor Architecture + Territorial Planning, EPFZ
  • URBAN LIFE FOR SUBURBIA – THE TICINO CASE
  • Frédéric BONNET, Architect, professor – Academy of architecture, Mendrisio
• Conclusion
  Panos MANTZIARAS, Braillard Architects Foundation

 

Keynote speech

 

• CURRENT PREOCCUPATIONS
  Reinier DE GRAAF, Architect – Office for Metropolitan Architecture, Rotterdam