Everything transforms

« Everything transforms » highlights and explores the many scales and complexity of domains impacted by transformation in the fields of architecture and urban planning. The project “everything transforms” brings to light the work of professors, professionals and researchers that propose a critical reflection on different technologies and their sustainability, as well as the pedagogy of transformation.

We need an «Umbaukultur» rather than a «Baukultur». That is to say, a culture for both, builders and renovators, devoted to the architectural techniques and approaches of the transformation project, and an ethics review of the project that questions the idea of a completed heritage. Innovation is more about re-appropriation, assembly and combinations of traditional techniques, sometimes ancestral ones, combined to the rational use of techniques. Indeed, transformation in architecture is often linked to the renovation of buildings – more specifically energy-efficient renovations – but the concept refers to a much broader range of skills and expertise.

To question and support this paradigm shift, the magazine « TRACÉS », the TRANSFORM Institute, and the architecture section of the HEIA-FR get together to create the section called “everything transforms”.

Whether at a territorial level or about constructive details, transformation connects the evolution of the built and unbuilt environment with economic, societal, and technical logics as well users and stakeholders systems that transform living conditions. The subject of transformation galvanizes knowledge and comprehension of past times (history and theory) by articulating them with a vision of the future (project). This subject also connects and spans throughout different scales from not only construction elements, interior spaces and buildings, but also neighborhoods, cities and territories.

Workshop

06.10.2023 | ESAA

Roundtable discussions (in French)

Publications (in French)