climate change, an urgent issue in Ecological Transition, particularly for architecture and landscape schools.
The scientific realities and consequences of this phenomenon are becoming increasingly well-known. It has been established that the mitigation and adaptation of emissions (particularly through the reduction of GHG emissions) directly impacts architecture, urban planning and landscape areas. Climate change must surely be put into relation with other environmental and social crises, depending on the multiple geographical and social situations of the territories involved.
The research work presented in this multidisciplinary collective work under the direction of Hassan Ait Haddou, Dimitri Toubanos and Philippe Villien aims to contribute to the recognition of the consequences of climate change and raise consciousness about mitigation and adaptation actions. In opposition to “climate skepticism”, the authors find inspiration in action-research, educational innovations and concrete transition practices, embracing different schools of thought. The challenge is to promote educational practices and research on climate change, to provide food for thought and action relying on the diversity of architectural and landscape responses to global warming and extreme episodes.
These contributions are the result of an international meeting organized by the scientific and educational network “EnsaÉco” and the LIFAM laboratory at ENSA Montpellier, not only combining the knowledge and experiences of “transitioners”, but also making a significant contribution to the development of adaptive actions, thanks to architecture and landscape.
Awareness about the challenges related to the ecological transition at higher education institutions continues to grow in France and at an international level. Indeed, rising to these challenges will not be possible without a real commitment from the teaching and research spheres. It is against this background that a scientific and educational network committed to the teaching of ecological transition in architecture and landscape schools, called “EnsaÉco”, was founded in November 2016.
Truly committed to this task, the scientific and educational network EnsaÉco initiated a series of scientific events around teaching and research on the themes of sustainable development. A series of meetings followed, bringing together the contributions from teachers, researchers and students from all of the ENSA(P) institutions in France, as well as European and internationally renowned scientific personalities.
Thus, in 2017, in Lyon, the first meetings of the network made it possible to federate the members of the community of teacher-researchers and to raise awareness of plural activities for teaching in architecture and landscape schools1. They resulted in the launch of an “Appeal for the teaching of transition in architecture and landscape schools”, or “Lyon Appeal”2.
The second meeting of the EnsaÉco network, which took place in 2018 in Nancy3, made it possible to debate a series of measures, called “tilting measures”, for the teaching and research of ecological transition in architecture and landscape schools.
In 2019, the EnsaÉco network desired to continue this reflection and open up a key question for architecture and landscape schools: that of scientific research, beyond the scope of teaching. It is in this spirit that the third meetings of the network took place in Montpellier, with a strong involvement from the Laboratoire Innovation Formes Architectures Milieux (LIFAM, Laboratory of Innovative Forms in Architectural Environments), the historical laboratory from ENSA Montpellier.
The major contributions of these meetings were dedicated to the articulation between teaching, research and professional practice on ecological transition. The particular interest in research on the theme of ecological transition follows various initiatives from the Ministry of Culture to support research related to this topic, starting with the research program “IgnisMutatRes: thinking architecture, the city and landscapes through the prism of energy” (2011–2015)4, followed by the program “20th century architecture, project material for the sustainable city of the 21st century” (2016–2020)5. At the same time, a significant amount of specific funding was allocated to research projects on ecological transition, either through the Ministry of Culture, PUCA (Plan Urbanisme Construction Architecture), ADEME (Agence de Maitrise de l’Energie, now called Agence de la Transition Ecologique), ANR (Agence Nationale de la Recherche) or CDC (Caisse des Dépôts et Consignation). All of these actions enabled a proliferation of research subjects feeding the reflection about the post-carbon city, something that the third meetings of the EnsaÉco network particularly wished to promote. This also made it possible to fuel teachings in architecture and landscape schools, while forging links between the academic and professional world.
As a result of these meetings, the EnsaÉco network wished to publish its first scientific work. The challenge of the publication was to promote diverse research projects, enhance knowledge-crossing across researchers, contribute to the development of innovative research and re-establish links between researchers, practitioners and citizens.
Using architectural, urban and landscape research material, EnsaÉco’s scientific committee identified several challenges of ecological transition in response to climate change. This question has been tackled following three general axes, voluntarily open to all disciplines, covering a variety of issues:
– The urban dimension: this axis focuses on bioclimatic management in an urban context: the dense city, the urban heat island (UHI), the plants in the city, transportation policies, or rehabilitation standards.
– The territorial dimension: this axis proposes to shift the focus from the specifically urban question to examine the relationships between the city and the problem of peri-urbanization, particularly exploring the way in which vernacular cultures in rural areas have an heuristic power for the development of architectural models likely to better respond to the challenges of ecological transition. The agricultural question is also key to this axis, as well as the relationship between the territory and the sea.
– The social dimension: embodying the third pillar of sustainable development, the social dimension is at the heart of paradoxes, contradictions and (geo)political and socio-economic conflicts, which must necessarily be called into question.
The texts collected following our call for contributions deliver initial intentions and insights to clarify the challenges of ecological transition in teaching, research and operational practices. The diversity of the contributions received testifies to an array of interdisciplinary approaches, putting the question of ecological transition at the center of the discussion within a global framework: climate change. The three general axes (urban, territorial and social dimensions) are approached in a transversal manner in the various articles reunited in this corpus.
This book is structured into three main sections, hosting a variety of themes which illustrate the issues raised by the three general axes previously mentioned.
The first section presents the educational processes at the service of ecological transition, by paying particular attention to good practices in terms of the teaching and research of the ecological challenges to be taken up by architects, town planners and landscapers. It is mainly based on teaching experiences across the ENSA (École Nationale Supérieure d’Architecture) institutions in France.
The first chapter begins with the conference of one of the pioneers of what is called bioclimatism. André De Herde delivered the general introduction to the three days of EnsaÉco meetings. The author structures his remarks into three main blocks. The first one presents the “bioclimatic”, “sustainable” and “smart” concepts proposed by architecture schools to remedy the energy crisis of the 1970s. The second one recalls the reasons for the creation of the “Architecture and Climate” research team in 1980. He concludes his contribution with a state-of-the-art of the teachings
