Inès LAMUNIÈRE, Architect, professor EPFL, director of LAMU/EPFL, founding member of the architectural firm Designlab-architecture, Geneva
The grandiose visionary projects that Hugh Ferris or Le Corbusier proposed in the early 1930s still haunt our minds. They envisioned a city that would effectively combine urbanisation and transport infrastructure. Is the utopia of their perspectives, such as the “Metropolis of Tomorrow” bridge/skyscraper to the “Obus Project” highway/building, about to be re-discussed? The urban reality of the 21st century requires a renewed approach to the project, where it is no longer considered “in itself”, but in connection with a set of other urban functions. Infrastructure is the primary concern here: whether concerning energy (aqueduct, pylon, dam), protection (canal, dike, quay, fortification), mobility (station, road, bridge , tunnel) or even others that could be qualified as symbolic (monument, skyline, urban landmark). The challenge now is to intervene with subtlety in sensitive urban or natural contexts. The presented research calls for an understanding of mobility issues starting from the constructed object, and for a broching of the link between infrastructure, urbanisation and landscape through the architectural project. To the extent that they bank on integrating rather than dissociating, relating with the context rather than abstracting it, innovating rather than reproducing standardised solutions, these project strategies produce singular works – with a ususally strong and sometimes mysterious image – which constitute the “risky objects”. It is this risk-taking that creates the new urban landscapes, adapted to the challenges of tomorrow. The speaker illustrated her point by presenting original projects developed in her agency dl-a and at EPFL’s Urban Architecture and Mobility Laboratory.