Choice of one of the following courses: Ecological transitions or Urban planning law or History of architecture or Human and social sciences or Theory of architecture

IMMEDIATE HISTORY OF A FIN DE SIÈCLE : CONTEMPORARY ARCHITECTURE ON SHOW (1965-2005)

Combining the history of ideas and the history of objects, this course offers a critical history of contemporary architecture seen through a particular prism: the major exhibitions that marked the last third of the 20th century, from the mid-1960s to the turn of the 21st century. Particularly numerous during this period, these exhibitions provide a privileged observation ground for the debates and discourses, trends and turning points, ephemeral fashions and more structural transformations that have animated this field, and from which today’s architecture is, in fact, heir. In particular, the course addresses the question of postmodernism as a passing architectural fashion, and postmodernity as a more chronic historical condition. By means of a critical, and therefore highly thematized, history, this course attempts to explore certain recurring features of architects’ relationship to this “postmodern condition”. The cross-cutting themes of this course are: the relationship to modernity (or at least to its rhetoric); the relationship to time (the present, history, memory, fashion, etc.); the autonomy or heteronomy of architecture; architecture as a product and architecture as a profession.

LANGUAGE OF TEACHING: French
LANGUAGES OF COMMUNICATION: French, English and Spanish
Recent years (with more intense, longer and more numerous heat waves), and the recent confinements resulting from the pandemic, remarkably underline the importance of gardens for the inhabitants of the urban world. While they help to cool cities, they also play a definite social role, often representing for many city dwellers the only contact with some form of nature.

The historic garden, an architectural and plant composition, is an expression of a people’s culture at a given time. They are part of our heritage.
Climate change linked to global warming is having an impact on gardens, highlighting their fragility and, along with other factors (conflicts, construction projects), threatening their preservation. To help preserve them, it’s essential to know their history and characteristics.
This knowledge is also essential for anyone wishing to create new gardens: the garden accompanies architecture, extends the city, transforms it, and the architect can draw valuable lessons from the study of gardens in terms of spatial planning and staging.

This course is designed to provide a basic understanding of the history of gardens and urban planting, with two objectives:
– to develop a spirit of curiosity by approaching a field of study that invites us to (re)discover the relationships between the garden and society, between the garden and the city, and the many forms of plant presence in the city
– to combine several modes of exploration: direct observation and fieldwork during visits, reading literary or historical texts, analysis of graphic or pictorial representations.

Continuous assessment: attendance and participation; a short writing exercise to tell the story of a garden.
Final written exam in two parts: the first part will cover the whole course through a series of questions requiring short answers; the second part, in the form of an essay, will go into greater depth on a cross-cutting subject, drawing on the lectures, readings and visits made.

To avoid overloading students, they will be asked to complete just one short exercise, an illustrated personal account of a garden that is important to them.
Regular, attentive attendance is expected, as well as reading the documents available in the Course Drive and taking part in at least one of the October visits.

A general bibliography is provided at the beginning of the semester, along with information on resource sites and websites. A detailed bibliography accompanies each course.

This course aims to strengthen the ability to analyze, evaluate and articulate philosophical arguments concerning the links between recent advances in neuroscience and the architectural field. The concept of empathy, or “Einfühlung”, will form the common thread of our reflection. Since its emergence in 19thᵉ century Germany as a central notion of philosophical aesthetics, empathy has continually permeated architectural theories and practices, right up to contemporary developments brought together under the term “neuroarchitecture”. We will take an in-depth look at this concept and its derivatives (embodiment, mental simulation, imagination, affordances), analyzing their relevance and concrete implications for contemporary architecture.

To be defined according to group size.

Course references will be provided at the beginning of the semester.

This lecture course offers an in-depth exploration of political ecology from its origins to contemporary issues, with particular emphasis on its implications for architecture and the city. The aim is to show how ecological thinking is not limited to protecting the environment, but also engages radical transformations in the way urban spaces are conceived, inhabited and governed. The approach lies at the crossroads of philosophy, urban sociology, politics and environmental studies, and aims to provide students with both a historical and critical understanding of current issues.

Final exam, presentations, DM (to be decided with the teacher at the beginning of the semester)

Reading and analysis of texts, presentations, case studies.

Suggested bibliography (20 titles)
Classics and foundations
1 George Perkins Marsh, Man and Nature, 1864
2 Rachel Carson, Silent Spring, 1962
3 Murray Bookchin, The Ecology of Freedom, 1982
4 Ivan Illich, Conviviality, 1973
5 Félix Guattari, The Three Ecologies, 1989
Architecture and the city
6. Sébastien Marot, Prendre la clé des champs, 2024
7. Sébastien Marot, Agriculture et architecture : trajectoires communes, 2018
8. Pierre Donadieu, Urban Countryside, 1998
9. Ken Yeang, Eco-Design: A Manual for Ecological Design, 2006
10. Ian McHarg, Design with Nature, 1969
Urban ecology and public policy
11. Timothy Beatley, Green Urbanism: Learning from European Cities, 2000
12. Peter Calthorpe, Urbanism in the Age of Climate Change, 2010
13. David Harvey, Justice, Nature and the Geography of Difference, 1996
14. Malcolm Ferdinand, A Decolonial Ecology, 2019
15. Achille Mbembe, Brutalism, 2020
Critical and contemporary perspectives
16. Donna Haraway, Living with Disorder, 2020
17. Anna Tsing, The mushroom at the end of the world, 2017
18. Philippe Descola, Beyond Nature and Culture, 2005
19. Isabelle Stengers, Au temps des catastrophes, 2009
20. Boaventura de Sousa Santos, Epistemologies of the South, 2016

MAKING THE CITY PRODUCTIVE

In France, 30% of urbanized areas are devoted to economic and commercial activities. These areas, which are often located on the outskirts of cities, are now the mainstay of the productive city, even if there are still a few mixed-use downtown districts.
The scale of the areas to be treated and the difficulty of transforming these peripheral business sites, which are unattractive from an urban point of view, not very dense and not very adaptable, make these sites a potential major national project in the same way as the renovation of large housing estates or shopping areas, the other monofunctional zones making up our urban peripheries.
Making the productive city resonates with the contradictory national injunctions of land sobriety (ZAN) and reindustrialization.

How can we maintain and develop economic activity in a context of land scarcity?
How to understand the urban heritage (zoning) of business parks (ZAE)?
What urban and architectural levers can be used to rethink and densify ZAEs?
What are the conditions for urban diversity?

These are topical issues that require the eye and skills of architects to reconcile spatial, economic, social and environmental issues.

BRINGAND Flore, FAIRE la ville productive : 30 propositions inventives pour repenser les zones d’activités économiques, à partir d’une sélection d’idées du concours Europan, sessions ” villes productives ” E14+E15, Paris, Éditions du PUCA, 2024

BRINGAND Flore, ” Espace public ” par défaut ” : les zones d’activités économiques standards ” in Les espaces publics urbains, penser, enquêter, fabriquer, FLEURY Antoine Fleury et GUERIN-PACE France (Dir.), Paris, Presses Universitaires François-Rabelais, collection “Villes et territoires”, 2022, p.211-234.

This architectural theory course is part of the new core curriculum for semesters 7 and 9.

It is designed as a forum for the presentation and discussion of contemporary architectural practices, ethics and statements.
The aim of the Master’s program is to highlight the polyphonic and sometimes contradictory dimensions of the theoretical positions expressed in architecture, on architecture and from architecture.

This course is built around the TPCAU (Theories and Practices of Architectural and Urban Design) discipline, and is in line with the theorizing culture of project managers and authors.
Taking into account the plurality of statements and doctrines, it presents knowledge and proposes tools enabling students, as a complement to their seminar and project work, to better find their way in the teeming universe of architectural theories and doctrines, and to define their own ethics of architectural action.

Attendance at sessions and participation in discussions
-Submission, at the end of the semester, of an original document presenting a reflection on the theoretical, doctrinal or ethical issues raised by your project in semester 7 or 9, based on the concepts covered in class.