E18

RE:SOURCE

The fragility of the Earth's ecosystem and social crises lead to the cultivation of alternative practices to harmful extraction of resources, overconsumption and pollution of living environments. Regenerating projects embracing nature and culture are to be imagined. It is about weaving those reviving synergistic links between biogeophysical data, socio-spatial justice and health. Three lines of rejuvenating resilience make it possible to reactivate other forms of dynamics and narratives around the ecologies of living and caring.

1 Re-sourcing in terms of Natural elements / Risks

In order to allow an alliance with the inhabited environments, it is time to rethink the combined vital powers between them that are water, air, earth and fire. The elements that are precious sources of energy and fertility, loaded with symbolic and poetic potentialities also prove to be linked to disturbances, risks and catastrophes that affect places and the entire terrestrial ecosystem from the moment that are triggered cataclysms, resulting from deleterious developments.

2 Re-sourcing in terms of ways of life and of Inclusivity

The reconsideration of living conditions also requires sustained attention to changes in lifestyles in a hyper-connected digital world. Arrangements capable of simultaneously preserving intimacy, commonality and solidarity are at stake, correlated with bioclimatic and permacultural strategies in which humans and non-humans can cooperate.

The selection of sites will be based on their potential to find these three types of resources.

The challenge for designers will be to look for ways to make them intersect. And it is the intersection of re-sourcing that will generate a promising spectrum of resilience projects in the face of the scarcity of resources and the vulnerability of sites.

3 Re-sourcing in terms of materiality

The already built now constituting a phenomenal source of materials, it is important to design devices for transforming existing buildings driven by the strategy of the 3 R’s (Reduce, Reuse, Recycle):

• Reduce new construction.
• Reuse in the sense of reusing already constructed spaces and materials.
• Recycle by using bio-geo sourced materials (earth, stone, fiber), anticipating deconstruction and becoming local again (mobilizing know-how and materials present on the sites).

This is to promote the preservation of natural resources.

 

We are delighted to be partnering with Switzerland in this EUROPAN session. Together we have put together an exciting potpourri of 4 sites: Stay tuned!