Follow-up to the PFE end-of-studies project

The HABITER LES MONDES URBAINS (HMU) field of study deals with the question of Habitation and its relationship to territories, in terms of collective or individual practices and the evolution of urbanization forms and architecture. It focuses on the analysis of spatial practices and perceptions, as well as on the design or transformation of buildings, built fabrics and public spaces. […]. Within “urban worlds” – including cities, metropolises and their peri-urban extensions, medium-sized conurbations […].

The aim of the PFE workshop “ARCHITECTURES OF COLLECTIVE HOUSING: THINKING AND BUILDING TRANSITION” is to explore the capacity of collective housing architectures to provide a response to environmental and societal changes, and to contribute to the transformation of urban worlds towards a neutral ecological balance: through their programmatic and typological, monumental and domestic, material and constructive dimensions, their manufacturing process and their life cycle.

Weekly sessions, intermediate presentations and S10 validation pre-jury validating authorization to defend the PFE.

SUBJECTS
Subjects are free as long as they fit in with the stated issues and proposed methodology. Students are encouraged to work on subjects and territories that give them the opportunity to question the potential of architecture to nurture an intelligence of the project in its relationship with the environment (to be specified), while ensuring that they can easily gather all the documents and knowledge required for the project.

PFE WORKSHOP
The PFE workshop is envisaged as a place of exploration, questioning and production of research through the project around the questions set out above. It thus contributes to the renewal of our discipline through its own resources – site, uses and materials – based on questions of territorial specificity, preservation and production of the “common good”, minimized ecological footprint, frugality in our relationship with materials thanks to a demanding, culturally-rooted constructive culture, and drawing on innovative channels to imagine differently the desire and pleasure of being together in the world. In line with the issues set out above, Final Year Projects must reveal well-argued positions and pragmatic, concerned and committed attitudes, through a set of project-based and situational solutions that respond to current societal, environmental, climatic, urban, technological and economic changes in a particular territory. They must demonstrate a personal and critical commitment to the discipline, open up avenues for forward-looking and innovative thinking, and demonstrate the student’s ability to develop a unique approach, method, tools and language.

METHODS AND TOOLS
The students base their thinking on an exploratory approach that enables them to design the project according to identified and desired qualities and values (spatial, environmental and constructive). Depending on the needs and progress of each student or group of students, an interscalar and iterative approach is expected, to exclude any “a priori” form and instead bring out singular forms and figures that surprise by resolving and alleviating the stated problems. Students are invited to question their design tools and systems of representation. Hand-drawing, large-scale models and other modes of “searching” representation (modeling) are favored. The scales of representation allow us to describe an iterative process between territorial and geographical intentions (scales to be defined according to the site studied), formatting from 1/500th (figure) to 1/200th (building) and constructive and atmospheric devices at 1/33rd, 1/20th and/or 1/5th. As the workshops aim to be a place open to a diversity of practices, collaborative team design can also lead to the production of prototypes, constituting 1:1 scale constructive experiments. The final presentation will give pride of place to models (especially large-scale ones) and unusual modes of representation, including hand-drawing, scale models, engraving and modeling.

BEYOND MODERNITY (PDLM) – BACK FROM FAR ASIA

“To travel is to know your home better when you return.”

Gilles Clément, Ulaanbaatar, September 2017

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This PFE supervision program extends the pedagogical and methodological approaches developed in semester 9 within the ‘PDLM, Détours en Extrême Asie’ project course. This annualized project course, which leads to the PFE defense, is associated with international workshops in Ulan Bator in Steppe Asia (September 2025) and Phnom Penh in Monsoon Asia (February 2026). Each student must choose one of the two destinations when registering for these courses.

In our view, this guarantees that students have the time they need to assimilate and apply the proposed teaching method, which takes a critical approach to contemporary anthropological, societal and ecological changes, and enables them to reconsider and update their methods, to reconsider and update the methods, themes and proposals (“not to make an immediate work”) of the architectural and urban project in the light of these developments, to seize the experience of fieldwork in an unknown and foreign city to sketch out a path to take, or rather who to choose, and to begin to define an attitude, to build an architect’s approach.

Because we believe in learning from experience in the field, sometimes far away, and we try to challenge the preconceived ideas and ways of doing things that are inherent to the disciplines of architecture and urban planning, we don’t impose on students either a site, or the nature of the programs and proposals they will develop.

At the end of their apprenticeship, students must also know how to “deform” themselves (school and the architectural world format) and express a personal way of being in the world. In particular, they must:

– Beware of “false friends”.
– Questioning what you take for granted.
– Master the tools of representation and expression specific to the discipline, but above all specific to an approach in the making.
– Consolidate a spatial and constructive culture, understand the evolution of types and be able to read morphologies.
– Question knowledge in the light of contemporary issues.
– Listen to other disciplines (especially the social and natural sciences).
– Be able to call on them and/or use their tools and knowledge.
– Develop a personal attitude and approach through the exercise of critical thinking.
– Be able to confront this approach with the imperatives of the commission.
– Knowing how to ‘get out of architecture through architecture’.
– Always be curious and receptive to the world and all those who inhabit it.

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ENSAPLV teachers: Olivier Boucheron (architecte-atelier nelobo/LAA), Louise Lepage (architecte-APUR), Mina Saïdi-Sharouz (architecte-anthropologue-LAA)
as well as Chistiane Blancot (architecte-urbaniste), Benoît Jacquet (architecte-EFEO).

LANGUAGE OF TEACHING: French
LANGUAGE(S) OF COMMUNICATION: English, Spanish

Jury ‘blanc’ semestriel en juin qui validate la possibilité de soutenir le PFE en juillet.

This course is part of the school’s “Habiter les Mondes Urbains” (HMU) field of study.

The PFE project is the culmination of the Master’s course, and is part of a process of questioning and reflection, carried out by students within a particular field of study and developed in particular during the Master’s dissertation. Our aim is to ensure the continuity and pedagogical coherence of this PFE, articulating the acquisitions and reflections initiated previously as the theoretical core of this new project: depending on their background, students will have to clearly state the issues envisaged at the start of their work (programmatic, constructive, typological, etc.).
With this in mind, the aim of this PFE group is to explore the issue of collective housing in the Greater Paris metropolitan area, by proposing a more in-depth and forward-looking exploration of the question of collective housing through the prism of typological research, enabling new spatial and residential perspectives, crossed with renewed work on constructive approaches (construction methods, consideration of environmental issues).

Weekly corrections, intermediate jury and public defense.
During June, a pre-jury within the PFE group will validate or not the work and thus the possibility of defending the PFE
At the end of the semester, students defend their work before a defense jury made up of the teachers responsible for the PFE, another teacher from the school or a teacher from another school of architecture and a competent outside personality.

Project work will be carried out alone or in pairs.
Projects will be finalized in the conventional scales of an architectural pre-project (1/500 for the general project, 1/200 and 1/100 for the housing plans; details at 1/50 and + if necessary; 3D representations and models, etc.).
Graphic documents will be accompanied by a detailed presentation and argumentation note, putting into perspective the student’s background and the thinking behind the project; this note will be given to the members of the jury. A record of the various stages of the project will be kept and presented at jury meetings.
Language of instruction: French

The general objective of this PFE is to support the student in the design of an architectural or urban project in the post-war urban territories of the Paris suburbs. More specifically, the PFE aims to:

* Articulate different scales of reflection: the building, the neighborhood, the city and the metropolis; * Associate the project approach with institutional, political and civic expectations; * Develop a personal problematic and translate it into an architectural or urban project; * Draw on all disciplinary fields to form an analysis and adopt an architect’s posture; * Design by developing a professional culture specific to urban renewal.

Assessment takes the form of weekly corrections, an intermediate jury and a final jury.

Students are expected to work individually, presenting the progress of their project on a weekly basis (research notebook, graphic and projection support, models), with support materials in line with the student’s project approach. For students working in pairs, supervision will be collective, but assessment will remain individual.

The role of the scenographer has always been closely linked to architecture, since it consists in inventing and materializing the space and itinerary of the imaginary journey to which the theater, city or ceremony invites the spectator. Scenography offers a privileged field of study for the design of spaces intended to establish relationships between sender and receiver, extending the field of research to all designs for spaces intended for contact, exchange and representation. It regulates the spectator’s relationship to the work in a certain symbolic context.
In this interaction between scenography and architecture, we study the presentation of the place and the place of the performance.

continuous monitoring

Programmatic and urban analysis
Feasibility project
Drawings and models

In the 60s, philosopher and communication theorist Marshall McLuhan compared the function of art to the radar system installed in northern Canada during the Cold War to warn of a possible invasion by the Soviet army:

“I see art in all its significance as a DEW line (Distant Early Warning line), a remote early warning system that can always be counted on to let traditional culture know what’s starting to happen to it.

According to McLuhan, the power of art was to identify society’s cultural turning points before their time, like an antenna picking up the first signals of transformation – in other words, before the effects were assimilated by all, or before it was too late. Art revealed the hidden impacts of new, forgotten or repressed phenomena, making the invisible visible. More than a simple reflection of reality, art anticipated the future of reality. In this way, art and artists helped society prepare for, adapt to and reflect on change.

This PFE group is interested in developing a similarly forward-looking and critical posture through projects that propose alternative futures and are rooted in a creative dialogue between art, architecture and society.

Public defense before a jury + on-site work sessions and intermediate juries with invited guests

Programmatic and urban analysis
Feasibility project

ARCHIS + AMO + C-Lab, Volume#14: Unsolicited Architecture, 2008.
ATELIER BOW-WOW and TSUKAMOTO Architectural Lab (Tokyo Institute of Technology), Pet Architecture Guide Book, Living Spheres Vol. 2, World Photo Press, Tokyo, 2002.
BORASI Giovanna, The Other Architect: Another Way of Building Architecture, Montreal, CCA, 2015.
CHUNG Chuihua Judy, Jeffrey INABA, Rem KOOLHAAS and Sze Tsung Nicolás LEONG, Project on the City 1: Great Leap Forward, Cambridge MA, Harvard Design School, 2001.
DAVID Catherine and Jean-Paul CHEVRIER, Documenta X, The Book, Politics-Poetics: Exposition, Cantz, Documenta, 1997.
DILLER SCOFIDIO + RENFRO, Architecture, Not Architecture, London, Phaidon Press, 2025.
KAJIMA Momoyo, Junzo KURODA, Yoshiharu TSUKAMOTO, Made in Tokyo: Guide Book, Kajima, Tokyo, 2001.
KRAUSS Rosalind, “La sculpture dans le champ élargi” (1979), in L’Originalité de l’avant-garde et autres mythes modernistes (1985), Paris, Macula, 5th edition, 2025.
HANRU Hou and Hans Ulrich OBRIST, Cities on the Move 2: Art and Architecture in Asia, CAPC Musée d’art contemporain/Arc en rêve Centre d’architecture, Bordeaux, 1998.
HARDINGHAM Samantha, Cedric Price Works 1952-2003: A Forward-Minded Retrospective, London/Montreal, AA Books/CCA, 2016.
INGOLD Tim, Faire: anthropologie, archéologie, art et architecture, Bellevaux, Éditions Dehors, 2017.
KOOLHAAS Rem, Stefano BOERI, Sanford KWINTER, Nadia TAZI and Hans Ulrich OBRIST, Mutations, Barcelona, Actar, 2001.
KOOLHAAS Rem, Fundamentals, exhibition catalog, 14th Architecture Biennale, Venice, Marsilio, 2014.
KOOLHAAS Rem, “The Art of Figuring Out How the World Works”, Google Zeitgeist, May 23, 2016, https://youtu.be/Zv9CEO7pApg?si=SKUK56D8Aksuk_Mm
LI Han and Yan HU, A Little Bit of Beijing, vols. 1-3, Tongji University Press, Shanghai, 2018.
McLUHAN Marshall, Comprendre les médias: les prolongements technologiques de l’homme (1964), Paris, Seuil, 1977.
MATAR-PERRET Roula, L’architecture selon Gordon Matta-Clark, Dijon, Les presses du réel, 2022.
MURPHY Diana, Blur: The Making of Nothing, Diller Scofidio, New York, Harry N. Abrams, 2002.
TILLMANS Wolfgang and Rem KOOLHAAS, “Book for Architects: Wolfgang Tillmans and Rem Koolhaas in Conversation”, Youtube, Tatetalks, May 23, 2017, https://youtu.be/lTtJRbL5Rzg?si=3qqFnnUtMMmKZ5FZ
TSUKAMOTO Yoshiharu, “Escaping the Spiral of Intolerance”, Tokyo Metabolizing, Tokyo, TOTO, 2010.
TSUKAMOTO, Yoshiharu, Manubu CHIBA, Seng KUAN and Tsuyoshi TANE, How is Life? Designing for our Earth, Tokyo, TOTO, 2024.
VENTURI Robert, Denise SCOTT-BROWN and Steven IZENOUR (1977), Teaching Las Vegas, Liège, Mardaga, 2008.
WEIZMAN Eyal, Forensic Architecture: violence at the threshold of detectability, New York, Zone Books, 2017.

Three key topics will guide our PFE group: peri-urban living and working on the metropolitan fringe, with a particular focus on the “productive city”, eco-responsible design and the place of art in public space.

Beyond “Greater Paris”, the future of the bangs of the Ile-de-France metropolitan area needs to be considered beyond the long history of center-periphery opposition.
This PFE group focuses on peripheral zones (commercial, business, housing estates, large-scale housing developments, facilities, etc.) and new towns in particular, to move away from a centrifugal vision of the metropolis, with its focus on Paris, by exploring urban bangs that are more locally rooted and oriented towards their hinterland.

Located on the northern fringe of Cergy-Pontoise, in contact with the Parc Naturel du Vexin Français, the proposed project approach is based on a careful understanding of environments, resources, living and non-living things, as well as geographical, landscape and environmental issues, with the aim of transforming town/country relations and, more generally, our relationship with the world around us.
However, in this approach, the architectural project is not the result of a territorial strategy. It also has its own autonomy and its own voice, which will be fully explored in this PFE group. This autonomy is coupled with two objectives: on the one hand, that of eco-responsible design in response to the urgent need to reduce the environmental impact of our cities and lifestyles, and on the other, that of reconnecting with the experimental spirit of the “architectural laboratory” that was the new town of Cergy-Pontoise.

The subject of the “productive city” will run through the semester and the students’ projects, directly or indirectly, depending on whether their project site is located at the heart of an economic activity zone or nearby. The aim will be to rethink the relationship between economic activity zones and the other pieces of the urban puzzle and the landscape, as well as to rethink the place and form of productive spaces in the city. Students will be asked to include in their architectural program a range of production spaces (crafts, VSEs/SMEs, etc.), combined with housing and/or facilities.

This year, our PFE group proposes to add an extra dimension to the current issues of urban, architectural and ecological design, that of paying particular attention to the place and role of Art in the city and in public space. Drawing on the founding presence of Art in the design of the new town of Cergy-Pontoise, with its renowned Axe Majeur, the aim is both to question the meaning and forms of existing combinations of “Art/public space/urban and architectural design” and to reflect on the place we want to give to Art today, and beyond that, the place we want to give to sensitivity and beauty in our environment.

50% participation and 50% final report

Course language: French

Selection: 1-page cover letter and mini-portfolio to be submitted one week after presentation of PFE groups. Results announced the following week.

Highly recommended follow-up to Flore Bringand’s teachings / TEAC Ecological Transition:
-S7/S9/ Making the city productive: definitions, issues and project hypotheses – October 13, 2025
-S8 / Density and urban forms: issues of urban habitability – May 20, 2026

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

MANGIN David, La ville franchisée, formes et structures de la ville contemporaine, Paris, Éditions de la Villette, 2004

ENGRAND Lionel and MILLOT Olivier, Cergy-Pontoise, formes et fictions d’une ville nouvelle, Éditions du Pavillon de l’Arsenal, 2015

Filmography express, in the heart of Cergy-Pontoise:
” J’ai aimé vivre là “, with the participation and texts of Annie ERNAUX, Régis SAUDER,2020
” L’Île au trésor “, Guillaume BRAC, 2018
” Naissance des pieuvres”, Céline SCIAMMA, 2007
“L’Ami de mon amie”, Eric ROHMER, 1987

This course is designed as a workshop for experimenting with new architectural forms, discourses, reflections and research. Each student is invited to develop a personal project based on research and experimentation, which questions the architecture of the 21st century. The aim is to imagine the architectures of the future, to provide answers to the challenge of architecture in the face of the climatic, social, aesthetic and economic challenges of our time?

Rather than proposing a site and a problem, this workshop proposes an approach focused on taking a personal project from intention to architectural and constructive detail. For these reasons, special emphasis will be placed on the research approach. The research pathway will be integrated into the framework, as will the bi-curricular pathway.

First meeting Wednesday, September 2 at 5:00 p.m. in room 214

Weekly corrections, intermediate juries and public defense

Individual and group corrections, 2 intermediate juries with external experts

– Presentations and studies using various media (video projection, poster, booklet), production of study models at various scales, personalized graphic and textual production in line with the project.

In response to the changing face of territories and the challenges of sustainable development, this PFE Paysage/S aims to familiarize students with the development of an architectural or urban issue, starting with the study of a specific location and taking into account the importance of the environments in which it is situated. In order to design a building and/or transform a site, students will be invited to cross architectural, urban and landscape scales of analysis. They must learn to develop a holistic understanding of the needs of the places where they wish to intervene. For his project, he will rely on a “complex process” capable of grasping the cultural, social, economic and environmental issues of the place where he will be working. He will seek to go beyond the simple proposition of drawing an architecture or a finished piece of land, and imagine a project capable of forming a dynamic stratum, capable of giving meaning to fabrics in constant renewal.

Assessment is regular throughout the semester and follows the different rhythms of the semester. It culminates in a final jury.

Rhythm of the semester: the semester is divided into two phases.
Phase 1: This is devoted to the sensitive recognition of the territory chosen by the student. This phase of work leads to the emergence of a project strategy, the choice of a site and the definition of a program.
Time 2: This is a time devoted to experimentation and design. This phase builds on the student’s capacity for autonomy. This is the time when research will feed into the project and the chosen problem. Emphasis is placed on the coherence between project thinking and project expression, resulting in a project that demonstrates a real capacity for argumentative proposition.

At a time of lasting environmental uncertainty, when disasters linked to natural hazards are multiplying, intensifying and dramatically affecting more and more territories and their populations, this PFE group aims to develop the new installation skills that architecture deploys in the face of such a context.

Based on projects that are situated, constructible and habitable, the aim is to pass on appropriate architectural knowledge and know-how, involving skills for installing this new climatic regime, in its urban, ecological, social, constructive and aesthetic aspects.
Project knowledge is here the skills of adaptation, anticipation and evolutivity that architecture proposes to these fragile environments, in order to inhabit them better, with care and in an appropriate way.

Natural hazards require us to “work with” the multiple realities of these places and environments. This means building processes of architectural invention based on scientific, geographical, climatic, economic, cultural and sensitive data.

Final exam: 100%.

A small number of seminar sessions will be devoted to establishing a design working method.

INFORMATION MEETING MONDAY 29.09.2025 at 3 p.m. ROOM 207

Teaching in French | Languages spoken: English, German | Registration on a first-come, first-served basis and subject to availability.

– Cultivate autonomy
– Link architectural culture, technology and society
– Test a personal approach in contact with contemporary society, its players and their concrete needs
– Explore related fields of the discipline
– Develop a credible project that can be valorized on the job market

– Attendance at sessions according to progress requirements
– Participation, reflection, questioning and production of materials needed to develop the project
– Final output: graphic documents, mock-up, presentation to PFE jury.

– Analysis
– Developing and formalizing a project through graphic documents, models and structured discourse

This P.F.E. project group has 2 objectives:
Objective 1: Use and applications of digital tools for architectural and urban planning projects. Development of web sharing tools –
Development of innovative approaches in which digital technology plays a part in architectural and urban writing.
Objective 2: International exposure and exposure to European urban and architectural culture:
Prior to the PFE project, students have had international experience during their studies: Cooperation trip, international workshop, long-term mobility, transnational teaching. This PFE enables them to develop a question linked to their mobility or international experience, and to write their P.F.E. on it.

Weekly supervision –
And continuous progress control with required reports as the project evolves.

Choice of Land – Choice of Program – Choice of Subject: Free
The context of the project and the objectives to be achieved must be defined.

The choice of a site linked to previous international experience is encouraged if information and communications (Web sharing – Internet, etc.) are favorable

Definition of a program including the evolution of new lifestyles and urban policies is desirable.

Definition of the project organization and composition system (digitization, algorithms, parameterization), -technology transfer_ is recommended.

In line with objectives
Scenarios and scales of representation to be defined.

Teaching team : Justine Lipski / Dominique Beautems

URGENT ADAPTATIONS registration calendar :

Information meeting by videoconference on Friday 4th – 1pm (link will be posted on taïga)
-Shuttle forms sent on Monday 7th October
-Form presentation meeting on Friday 11th
-Registration validation on Friday 18th October

NOTE: the completed presentation documents have been posted on the drive

Link to webex meeting: Friday, October 4, 1:00 pm
https://paris-lavillette-archi.webex.com/paris-lavillette-archi-fr/j.php?MTID=m3425907df61ffa076fe659d2ffbbe3a7

Meeting number:
2793 126 9770

Meeting password:
nfGWgi26W5q

Join from a video system or application
Dial 27931269770@paris-lavillette-archi.webex.com
You can also dial 62.109.219.4 and enter your meeting number.

Contact us by phone
+49-619-6781-9736
Access code: 27931269770

ISSUES: PROGRAMMING AS A POLARITY LABORATORY

The future of the architectural heritage of military sites that have been abandoned since the implementation of the 2008 defense restructuring plan, is now considered a strategic issue in terms of the urban, economic and environmental impact of building a city on top of a city with what’s already there.

The recurrence of questions about the transformation of these vast, landlocked sites and the redevelopment of their built heritage, raises profound questions for local authorities about the programs that can be used to reinvent the influence of these sites, sometimes in response to the housing shortage.

It’s a collective effort to create new centers of attraction in these areas of identity.
Urban policies play a key role, as they address the issue of developing new economic and social dynamics to open up these enclaves and create future polarities, combining density and diversity.

These new challenges are leading to participative consultations to think together about new ways of living better together.
The expectations of local residents are numerous: new buildings and renovations that meet environmental requirements, the installation of local services and dynamic activities, the re-qualification of the presence of nature, the introduction of a diversity of uses in public space, the promotion of inter-neighborhood links based on pedestrian practices and public transport services…

SUPERVISION / METHODOLOGY

The IPFE workshop in semester 9 begins with a study tour of the site and its many perceptions. The second phase will involve a collective study of the specifications defined by the city following the consultation phases, with a presentation of the guide plan by the Marniquet Aubouin urban planning studio, in charge of the project.
Then, after a collective diagnostic phase, we’ll take an open, critical look at possible changes to the defined framework, and propose transgressive hypotheses.
One of the main expectations will be to involve everyone in a global prospective reflection with a multiscalar approach that will involve the whole group in debates to feed different hypotheses on the site.
This requires collegiality, availability, maturity, ambition and collective organization skills.

In semester 10, the PFE workshop will focus on architectural and urban responses to generic proposals.
The plot of the future neighborhood will be divided into distinct, interlocking lots. Each lot will be the subject of a Personal End-of-Study Project to be developed in pairs.
The design process will aim to achieve an expression of the built space at a minimum scale of 1:50, enabling the synergy between uses, structural principles and the materiality of the envelope to be addressed. The definition of the landscaping of the public space will be an integral part of the project.
From the public space to the cell, the work will consist of thinking about the quality of uses serving the development of new forms of living together. The spatial factory will aim to develop habitat and activity typologies that integrate operating flexibility or hybridization.

In semester 9, a visit to the Limoges context is scheduled for November, followed by a presentation by the Marniquet Auboin urban planning studio
-In semester 10, projects will be developed in pairs.

CONTACTS

dominique.beautems@paris-lavillette.archi.fr
justinelipski@yahoo.fr

IPFE PROCEDURE

physical immersion:
– Visit of the site’s context, in principle on a Saturday so as not to interfere with your classes
intellectual immersion:
– Familiarization with the surveys, documents and investigations already provided by the city
– Presentation by the Marniquet Auboin urban planning studio, in charge of the project, in principle on a Tuesday at 5 p.m.

PFE SCHEDULE – Thursdays from 9:00 am to 5:00 pm except holiday Thursdays which are on Wednesdays

Phase 1 collective – 5 sessions
-analyses and diagnoses of the existing site and guide plan
-Themes and issues
-Nouveau plan guide à échelle urbaine et archi
-Maquette de site 1/1000 et plaquette de restitution collective
-Cour de graphisme et modes de représentation
-Interventions by external personalities including a landscape architect

Phase 2 individual – 8 sessions
Architectural and landscape development of proposals from 1:500 to 1:50
Layout of presentation brochure

Phase 3 – 3 sessions
Finalizing the project report – each pair will develop an identified part
Preparing for the oral presentation

Phase 4 – juries
PFE defence in the presence of the actors
Presentation of 8 A0 plates + models from 1/1000 (context) to 1/50 (partial bark)

Ability to draw by hand is required.

https://www.limoges.fr/citoyenne/marceau-reinvente-reconversion-de-lancienne-caserne

Naval’: Part of this PFE group receives and validates the work of students who have completed their 2nd cycle internship. This course is also the final step in the Master’s cycle of architectural studies, and should enable students to design a ship project, presented as a PFE, demonstrating their ability to think about architecture in its most complex forms.

Mayotte’: Part of this PFE group will be working on the development of the island of Mayotte through housing, public facilities and urban planning projects. The objectives are as follows: to show that the architectural project is a multi-disciplinary place where the political act, cultures, science and the arts converge, in short the whole social ritual.
Among the objectives sought for the ‘M’ayotte’ group, the students:
-will have to carry out a multi-criteria diagnosis, as part of a sustainable development approach at different scales of the territory, the urban fabric, the site and the chosen building. The diagnosis will be technical, social, economic, environmental and sensitive. Particular attention will be paid to historical, landscape and architectural analysis, in relation to economic and social issues.
These projects will take into account social, economic and environmental issues, as well as the expectations of local decision-makers. While taking into account local economic and organizational possibilities, the projects must be forward-looking to propose a development dynamic and uses adapted to the area.
– must result in a project that is legitimate and quantifiable in terms of the issues at the heart of sustainable development (management of resources, waste, pollution, carbon impact, use of bio-sourced materials, social impact, driving force for development, etc.).)
-will pay particular attention to the subject of water through a cross-disciplinary approach: (as a resource, blue fabric, biodiversity, economic driver, social link…)
-will demonstrate a fine bioclimatic analysis, both on the urban scale and on the scale of the building in its site.
go back and forth between team work and independent individual production
-be put in a professional situation if the health situation allows: they will be in contact with the various public and private players in the area, who will explain their expectations, challenges, issues and resources.

6 hours weekly, 2 hours of classes and 4 hours of individual and group supervision, for 15 sessions, i.e. = 90 hours

Pfe’s workshop is part of the Inventing in the Existing / Inheritance and Mutation program.
“… This field of study is concerned with the history and modes of transformation of the various existing built heritages: recognized, little-known, commonplace or ordinary… It therefore covers both listed or registered monuments and valuable but as yet unidentified heritage, and includes modest heritages (rural, industrial, modernist). It also questions the ecological transformation of the ordinary or self-produced heritage that makes up the city in all its diversity and, in contrast to “urban palimpsests” in which only the site’s land is reused, it bases its urban modifications on the transformation of pre-existing built structures, which must be restored, rehabilitated, reconverted, enhanced, transformed: building with the built or building in the built.”

The Pfe workshop proposes to use an “existing situation” as a starting point for the issues to be developed by each student as part of his or her final project. This “existing situation” brings together themes that we feel should be explored in the Parisian Ecole Nationale Supérieure d’Architecture: the future of the Paris suburbs will be examined through the prism of its primary matrix, the living environment.

Weekly session, intermediate jury and public defense.
During June, a pre-jury within the Pfe group will validate or not the work and thus the possibility of defending the PFE.
At the end of the semester, students defend their work before a defense jury made up of the teachers in charge of the workshop, another teacher from ENSAPLV or another school, and a competent outside personality.

Internal workshop debates throughout the semester will enable students to develop well-argued, committed and even innovative positions for their final projects.

THE TOOLS
Students are invited to explore and exploit the tools of representation used in the rigorous transformation of an existing building. The emphasis is on hand-drawing and large-scale models. The scales of representation allow us to describe an iterative process between urban or even territorial intentions, a situational setting of the building(s) at 1/500 or 1/200 and constructive resolutions at 1/33, 1/20 or even 1/5.

To be set up.

The PFE group “Construire dans le construit. Patrimoines et transformations”, supervised by Pietro CREMONINI and Philippe LAUZANNE, offers two types of PFE topics:

1) ‘Personal’ topics in line with the group’s theme (see ‘content’ below), proposed by the students and approved by the teaching staff. Each proposal should unite several students (while leading to mostly individual projects).
2) topics in continuity with those studied in the first semester in the S9 IEHM groups.

Participation in weekly group critique and evaluation sessions
Intermediate presentations, progress reports (monthly).
Pre-rendus (June)

Course language: French.

Development of projects at a sufficiently detailed stage to guarantee control of the proposed landscape and architectural features.
Environment control using 3D simulations and highly detailed models

field of study “Inventing in the Existing: Inheritances and Mutations”
CURA METAMORPHOSIS – Transforming with care
Marine Le Roy, Grichka Martinetti
Spring semester 2026

The workshop focuses on the capacity of a territory, a site or a construction
whatever it may be, to go beyond its initial use by accompanying the new one that contemporary civilization collectively thinks of ascribing to it.
At a time when our societies are experiencing successive economic and social crises, the notion of “care” is examined here in the broadest sense and from two angles:
taking care of the place, the architecture concerned, first and foremost from a pragmatic and architectonic angle, by studying, recognizing and diagnosing it; taking care of the future inhabitants, through the choice of program, spatial organization and the nature of the appropriate architectural intervention.
Starting from a site with a strong character, dedicated to an obsolete or past function, we propose to question the notions of pre-existence, perennity and temporary, and to design a project based on several approaches. Recognition of the site through:
physical immersion: journey, survey, drawing, photographic report,
intellectual immersion: history, survey, analysis of socio-economic issues,
generating an entry into the project through analysis of architectural detail by engaging a design process linked to the primary elements: walls and their bays, roofs, staircases…
To be able to propose a program for reactivating the site linked to new relational devices at work in architectural figures.

Transforming places through architecture requires a deeper understanding of the different cultures that are all confronted with this question.
“Nothing old ever really comes back to life, but it never quite disappears either. And everything that once was emerges in a new form.”
Alvar Aalto

To invent in the existing is to restore a thought, a hidden or lost knowledge, in order to question the present.

>> Working methods: in groups for on-site workshops / in pairs for projects with identification of individual parts
>> Assessment: continuous assessment (attendance/assiduity) by intermediate jury (display) / PFE jury (with external contributors).

DURING THE SEMESTER
The project runs continuously, with regular feedback, and is marked by 4 specific phases. The 4 sequences are divided into stages:

> Sequence 1 (4 sessions)
Workshop: THE PLACE: immersing yourself in the site: surveying it, recognizing it, representing it and learning how to render it to initiate the first hypotheses of the hidden project…
2/3-day trip to the site (Beginning of March 2026 -> dates to be confirmed)
> Sequence 2 (4 sessions)
METHOD, IDEA AND CONCEPT, REPRESENTATION. Particular attention will be paid throughout the semester to the notion of architectural ‘idea’, and the techniques and tools of project representation.

> Sequence 3 (4 sessions)
MATERIAL AND STRUCTURE: EDIFICE. Our hypothesis is that the project grows from its center. Its form develops along the same path: the design closely combines technical mastery of assemblies and the use of materials.
> Sequence 4 (3 sessions)
EXPRESSION / REPRESENTATION. Synthesis, oral expression and representation techniques.

The aim of the workshop is to examine the capacity of a territory, a site or a building to extend, or even exceed, its existence beyond its initial use.
At a time when our societies are experiencing successive economic and social crises, the notion of “care” will be examined here in the broadest sense and from two angles:
– Taking care of the place, the architecture, the building concerned, primarily from a pragmatic and architectural angle, by studying it, recognizing it, “diagnosing” it
– Taking care of future inhabitants through the choice of program, spatial organization, the nature of the appropriate architectural intervention, etc.

>> Working methods: in groups for on-site workshops / in pairs for projects with identification of individual parts
>> Assessment: continuous assessment (attendance/assiduity) by intermediate jury (display) / PFE jury (with external contributors).