What role can Architecture play in raising awareness of the issues of better construction?
Buildings are an essential component of the sustainable city. As architects, we have a major role to play in proposing environmentally friendly techniques and materials, and in designing buildings and neighborhoods with reduced energy consumption, which are also capable of adapting to a changing environment. The future of our urbanity is intimately correlated to the destiny of nature. We must observe it, learn from its functioning in order to have a better understanding and to better integrate it into the cycles of the living, hence the value of biomimicry.
For a long time, we did not see or know how to initiate the necessary changes, first because we were not aware, then there was awareness, but with a shock that did not give birth to solutions. Fortunately, today, and particularly thanks to the health crisis which will have had the positive effect of awakening consciences and accelerating trends and mentalities, coupled with the arrival of a new generation on the market, our current patterns are evolving.
However, we must succeed in making relevant and effective choices, simply prioritize and adapt in the face of the plethora of solutions that continue to emerge. We need to equip ourselves with decision-making tools. We need to create more links between science and daily reality to choose, arbitrate and evolve, in order not to give in to the fashion of false good ideas, and to limit the loss of time that is already counted for us.
Beyond purely technical solutions, there are therefore already proven and systematically applicable automatisms to enter together into this new paradigm.
- Participate in the reconstruction of the city on the city. We must rethink the life cycle of the building differently, to allow it to transform and ultimately serve new needs. This is, for example, allowing the office to become housing tomorrow, or why not a school.
- The 15-minute city is another good guiding principle in terms of urban fabric at all scales, as it allows the creation of sub-units of life in the city, within which one can live, work, thrive, learn, exchange...
- Biomimicry, which is part of a more global bio-inspired approach, constitutes an ultra-efficient innovation tool capable of fully structuring this new sought-after city model. This leads to a saving of materials, a lightening of structures, passive ventilation, thermal comfort, better management of the water cycle... But also to a better hybridization of uses. There are multiple answers to move towards a positive footprint of housing and entire neighborhoods.
Climate change invites us to return to the common sense of the ancients, whose architecture was ultimately a form of art intended to build climates within habitats composing with their environment. This is undoubtedly our mission: to give architecture back its climatic purpose.
What role do you see Bechu & Associés taking with regard to climate issues in the coming decades?
My wish is to continue to evolve in R&D laboratory mode, cultivating always and even more links with science, to develop new tools fully appropriable by all our teams, capable of fully serving all our projects. Today, even if the desire to always do better is there, the various obstacles mentioned at the beginning of the interview mean that some of our collaborators are sometimes disappointed with the turn that certain projects have taken, that is to say with a degraded level of ambition at the end of the project. I was also told the other day that not all projects developed at the agency had the same level of environmental innovation, and whether we should not choose our projects to be fully in line with what we affirm. I replied that beyond the fact that the overall environmental ambition level of our projects has already significantly improved, given a market awareness, constraining regulations that boost it, and evolving consumer expectations, I could answer the question in two ways.
Either we position ourselves as an agency that has already understood everything and has nothing more to learn, which will choose projects corresponding to a very high level of ambition with all the means necessary to go all the way (financial, time, social and political ease of execution, ...). In a way, five-legged sheep that we would have to succeed in finding! And which, if such were the case, given their rarity, would require drastically reducing teams to maintain an economic balance afloat, with the risk of conveying a message very disconnected from our values.
Or we keep the set course: that of being a driving actor in the climate transition of our market, telling ourselves that each project is an opportunity to raise awareness, to do better, and above all to continue to learn with a changing market. We are in a knowledge economy: the more we share, the more we grow.
What initiatives and approaches do you consider promising in the face of ecological challenges and why?
At the risk of repeating myself: biomimicry and any broader bio-inspired innovation approach. This boosts the implementation of a holistic vision capable of setting in motion all the stakeholders of a project, especially as it confers an exciting collective narrative, and therefore invites to do together.
Let's take the example of the issue of thermal comfort, a topical theme. Although May 2024 was one of the rainiest months ever recorded in France, it was mainly characterized by the absence of sun. While this lack of sunshine weighs on morale, its return can also be detrimental. Indeed, the increase in temperatures induced by climate change increases the risk of urban heat islands and the degradation of urban quality of life. Excessive heat intensifies cooling needs, leading to increased energy consumption and additional greenhouse gas emissions, fueling a vicious circle. Moreover, the concrete and asphalt surfaces of cities absorb and retain heat, exacerbating high temperatures. We know that by 2050, heat waves will be twice as frequent and/or intense, resulting in increased health risks (cramps, dehydration, respiratory problems, ...), and simply degrading social life, therefore the morale of the troops.
With the scarcity of resources, it is urgent to innovate in a sober and as low tech as possible way to respond to the three challenges that are at the heart of the climate transition of our cities: mitigation, adaptation, and optimization of circular economies.
For our cities to become more resilient and pleasant to live in during summer, it is essential to adopt a systemic approach, where urban planning, architecture and landscape design collaborate to create integrated and harmonious environments. The integration of green roofs, reflective facades and green corridors are just some of the strategies inspired by nature. And it is in this perspective that biomimicry takes on its full meaning, offering us innovative and environmentally friendly solutions to face current and future climate challenges. By drawing inspiration from the mechanisms and strategies developed by living organisms over millions of years of evolution, biomimicry allows designers to innovate to improve our urban daily life, in order to promote summer comfort, both indoor and outdoor.
By imagining our cities as living entities, we can go further than reintegrating nature within them, so that the cities themselves reintegrate into the great cycles of nature. And thus take the best of what the sun has to offer us, its light, its vital energy, and that it remains our best friend for a long time.
If you were appointed responsible for the sustainable transformation of the real estate sector, what would be your action plan, what would be the main axes to implement and why?
My action plan for the sustainable transformation of the real estate sector would include three main axes focused on climate education, interdisciplinary collaborations and readability for consumers:
1. Educate about climate: it is essential to raise awareness among real estate sector actors and the general public about climate issues and actions to be implemented to reduce the carbon footprint. However, it is clear that we are facing climate illiteracy, a real economic and public health issue, because being uninformed, people are unable to distinguish between the too often alarmist messages given to them.
2. Force interdisciplinary and intersectoral collaborations: To accelerate and succeed in this transition towards a more sustainable real estate sector, it is essential that real estate professionals draw inspiration from all components of the city and collaborate with other sectors and disciplines. The University of the City of Tomorrow, a spin-off of the Palladio Foundation, tends towards this objective. I had the chance this year to join the Anticipations program created by J.C. Fromantin, the Mayor of Neuilly, which fully responds to this challenge. These initiatives need to be multiplied.
3. Make real estate more readable for consumers: it is crucial to make information on the environmental and societal characteristics of real estate more accessible and understandable for consumers, in order to help them make more responsible choices.
On the contrary, what actions should be banned immediately?
An action to ban immediately would be to continue operating in silos. Both at the professional level, that is to say throughout the real estate value chain, and at the level of internal skills.
At the project management level, operating with a shared digital model has greatly helped de-siloing. We need to find how to do the same at the global chain level, for the good of projects and for a better sharing of the value given upstream, today too much recovered at the end of the race... This will allow better valuation of the design part which again counts mainly in the low carbon valuation of a project in fine.
Internally within companies, this involves two things: more dialogue between skills that will be facilitated by organizations on a more human scale. Just as beehives or anthills have critical sizes in terms of population not to be exceeded, in which case they naturally multiply by swarming, I believe that there are sizes not to be exceeded, and/or certain growth thresholds that require reorganization to create boxes within the box always on a human scale, capable of maintaining a form of agility essential to sustainability. So that politics does not prevail. Ecology is anything but a political matter...
The final question, which actor would you give the floor to express themselves on the issues of better construction? Any particular themes they should express themselves on in your opinion? Why him, her?
In the context of better construction issues, I would give the floor to nature itself. Small environmental builders such as birds, beavers and bees can teach us valuable lessons about ecological construction, the use of local and sustainable materials, ecosystem regulation and the design of efficient and resource-saving structures. Their intelligence and ability to create robust and comfortable habitats while promoting biodiversity and regulating environmental conditions are inspiring examples for architects and urban planners. By listening to and observing these small builders of nature, we could find innovative and environmentally friendly solutions to improve the way we build our human habitats. Some scientists whose work focuses on these issues are true translators of nature. Gilles Bœuf is one of them.