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Construction

Introduce yourself briefly, background, influences, etc...

My path towards architecture and sustainable urban planning is, one could say, quite atypical. It was forged from diverse experiences, sometimes beyond French borders, which guided me towards my current roles. Initially attracted to medicine, my curiosity pushed me towards other horizons. Indeed after a year of medicine, I decided to reorient myself and obtained a few years later a Master's degree in finance from Paris-Dauphine. I flew to China where I spent two years working on initiatives related to the urban transformation of Beijing for the 2008 Olympics within the Bechu agency. Back in France, I was recruited by Euro RSCG C&O for whom I worked on environmental projects, then I decided to complete my training with a specialized Master's in international project management at ESCP. I then joined Capgemini Consulting as a banking-insurance strategy consultant. Two years later, my entrepreneurial spirit led me to co-found WineSitting in 2009, a wine logistics company in Île-de-France. Finally, in 2014, I joined the family agency Bechu & Associés, for what I thought would be only a three-year mission and since then, I have never left.

You have been coordinating the strategic development of Bechu & Associés for several years, what were your personal objectives at the beginning of this position? Have they been fulfilled?

When joining Bechu & Associés in 2014, my objective was to reposition the agency and prepare its future. Not being an architect, I did not imagine directing it then. Then I realized that not only is architecture a family adventure with which I grew up and in which I have always been involved. But above all, that my outside experience would allow me to bring to the agency a fresh and new perspective, in service of a more committed vision, but always, based on the talent and experience that has been cultivated for years by my father and his partners. If today, I co-direct the agency with my father, my sister and our associates, I am particularly proud to have been able to reposition it as a key player in the ecological transition in the real estate sector. My role in its development makes even more sense as it allows me to continue to undertake and learn, through meetings and collaborations with innovative start-ups, but also to bring to life my passions for science, innovation, and environmental transition.

What is, in your opinion, the role of architecture and urban planning today?

We are faced more than ever with planetary limits and a growing ecological awareness. Architecture and urban planning must play a leadership role and be a solution through the creation of cities capable of supporting human life while preserving ecosystems. Our role is to help humans reconnect with the living, to understand their interdependence with the environment. We must: - Design cities that take care of their inhabitants, integrating reflections around health (physical, social, mental...) in each project. - Make cities edible, by rethinking the link between food and urbanization. Food must participate in the transformation of the morphology of cities. - Promote circular economy, by reintegrating cities into the natural cycles of life via biomimetic innovation. In short, our mission is to protect humans by helping them protect the Earth, so that it protects them in return. To quote Commander Cousteau: We love what has amazed us, and we protect what we love. We must inspire wonder for our environment, in order to encourage its protection.
Bechu et Associés - Image
Bechu et Associés - Image

My outside experience would allow me to bring to the agency a fresh and new perspective, in service of a more committed vision.

Clémence Bechu|General Director
Clémence Bechu
Bechu et Associés - Image

Déconstruction

What are, in your opinion, the main challenges that the professions of architecture and urban planning are currently facing in terms of sustainability and environmental impact?

Climate is positioning itself as the keystone of contemporary urban challenges, imposing on architecture and urban planning two essential priorities: adaptation to climate change and reduction of its acceleration. This requires from our professions increased collaboration with science to integrate climate data into urban design. The Climate Company is for us (Bechu & Associés) one of these key partners. The challenges we face are on one hand technical, with issues such as reducing the carbon footprint of construction materials, improving the energy efficiency of buildings, sustainable water management, bioclimatic design and resilience to climate change. On the other hand, societal, our projects must create engagement to become realistic. The involvement of citizens in urban projects is therefore crucial. Time also remains a significant challenge with a real need to rethink linear and siloed processes to promote a circular approach in order to promote well-thought-out design from the start. This represents a cost-effective investment to reduce the environmental footprint of projects.

How does your agency, Bechu & Associés, integrate principles of sustainability and respect for the environment in the design of its projects?

One of the things that struck me when I arrived at the agency in 2014 was seeing how competition regulations were written regarding how we had to present our projects, in layers: first architecture, then landscape, and finally environmental strategy. Three elements that in reality must form a whole to make a high-performance sustainable project. Our approach is the opposite of this, as we combine these subjects from the start of any project. The architect-urban planner is in reality a composer. The metaphor between architect and musician is often borrowed... For a project to be sustainable, it must be born from its roots, and each of our choices guided by the responsibility we have towards the living. This key phrase for our agency, like a reason for being, perfectly defines our sustainable approach, regardless of the project. It guides all our reflections and promotes an always contextual approach to places. We thus commit to respecting and valuing history, while protecting the ecosystem in which we insert ourselves. It also implies all the humility that must always be put into it. Because in addition to respect for a place, there is respect for others. A project is not composed alone, but with several people. It is a juxtaposition of talents and skills in service of a common goal.

What place should reuse occupy in your opinion in the design of real estate projects?

Reuse is an essential part of the globally circular economy towards which our society must strive. This observation is simple when we know that the building sector generates about 46 million tons of waste per year, of which more than 85% comes from deconstruction and rehabilitation work (data from the FFB). Promoting reuse is a way to contribute to the decarbonization of the building sector, to the preservation of natural resources and to the reduction of waste. However, I think it is important to distinguish between reuse, repurposing and recycling. Indeed, we cannot always reuse, and the cousins of reuse offer equally virtuous alternatives. This practice has long faced many obstacles, particularly on the economic level, but also regulatory. The reuse of materials often costs more, for example, and faces rather rigid standards. Fortunately, the trend is evolving, with financial and fiscal incentives, technological innovations and market dynamics gradually favoring it. Our Equilis project in Issy-les-Moulineaux is a concrete example where 53 tons of waste were saved through the reuse of joinery, or by recycling historical ceramics into terrazzo for the floor. The commitment and investment of the various parties involved and their collaboration was essential, particularly the project owner, Pimco. Successfully promoting reuse from the design of real estate projects allows, beyond responding to current environmental challenges, to demonstrate creativity, especially in our professions.

What role will rehabilitation play in your opinion in the future of urbanization of our territories, and why? How could the life cycle of buildings be impacted?

Rehabilitation is an exciting exercise that allows us to reinvent our cities and will play a central role in the future of urbanization of our territories by limiting urban sprawl, protecting soils and ensuring the softest possible densification of our cities. It also allows us to respect the history of a heritage, to renovate by recycling, to regenerate to reinsert the living and thus reduce the impact on the future. These operations do not have to pale in comparison to new construction, especially when considering their positive impact on carbon addition and the solutions they bring to energy and decarbonization issues. They are fully part of a circular economy approach to positively impact the life cycle of buildings by allowing: - To decrease resource extraction by favoring sustainable low-carbon materials, such as stone, wood, lime and bio-based insulation, - To reduce waste production and carbon emissions, - To extend the duration of use, - To promote the reuse, repair and recycling of materials By promoting renaturation, biodiversity, optimization of users' quality of life and carbon neutrality, building rehabilitation contributes to making our cities more attractive, resilient and sustainable for the future.

What is, in your opinion, the role and interest of certifications in real estate projects today? Can you mention a certification that is today, in your opinion, a real added value to a project and an example of a project that illustrates this?

Designed to enhance certain specific and intrinsic qualities of real estate projects, certifications play an important role in defining qualitative, environmental and safety ambitions, and in financially valuing investors. Their popularization also allows to raise the level of ambition of the market and therefore helps to improve the positive impact of projects, even playing a unifying role between project ownership and project management. However, the diversity of labels can make their readability complex and it is essential not to lose sight of the final objectives. Between national and international labels, dedicated to different project typologies, or devoted to specific themes, biodiversity, quality of life... the risk in seeking them is to fall into the trap of defining a label objective for the label, and not for the result we expect. The label must remain a means to achieve set objectives, which themselves must be considered as a minimum in view of the growth of issues. An example of a Label that I find particularly interesting, because it commits to defining a holistic vision of a project shared by all its stakeholders is the Living Building Challenge (LBC). It is one of the most ambitious and rigorous certifications in the field of sustainable construction. It offers a global approach covering all aspects of sustainable construction through 10 petals including: energy, water, materials, but also equity and beauty. An agency project illustrating this certification and its ambition to create buildings with a positive impact on the environment and society is the marine biomimicry center of excellence Estran in Biarritz, where water was used as a material in its own right and for which the building was designed to filter the waters of the earth.
Bechu et Associés - Image
Bechu et Associés - Image

Promoting reuse is a way to contribute to the decarbonization of the building sector, to the preservation of natural resources and to the reduction of waste.

Clémence Bechu|General Director
Clémence Bechu
Bechu et Associés - Image

Reconstruction

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.
Bechu et Associés - Image
trudaine
Bechu et Associés - Image