Xavier Wrona, associate professor at ENSASE and co-founder of Architecture in a World on Fire: “Practicing Architecture in a World on Fire”
© Xavier Wrona
This lecture, led by Professor Jim Njoo as part of the P909 project workshop “Learning About Places in a Different Way: Inquiry as a Project” in the “Designing and Building Architecture” area of study, is open to everyone, subject to availability.
The world is in turmoil—economically, politically, and socially—and there is no sign of a lull that could prevent these various flashpoints from converging in the coming years. In this situation, the narrative promoted by architecture schools is to continue producing buildings by “building better,” with “zero carbon emissions,” and “green” constructions. We believe that architecture schools have not yet realized that the problem is of a different nature, on a much larger scale. It is the entire system of human settlements that must be reexamined. To address this situation, we have created the “Architecture in a World on Fire” program at the École nationale supérieure d’architecture de Saint-Étienne. Its goal is to decouple architectural knowledge from the production of ecocidal buildings and to forge connections between the struggles of nature defending itself and the worlds of architecture.
Every year, together with our students, we reach out to a community group engaged in a struggle to try to put our architectural expertise to work for them. In 2024, we worked alongside the employees of the TotalEnergies refinery in Grandpuits, who were fighting against a greenwashing project targeting their workplace. In 2025, we worked alongside the collectives “Préservons la forêt des collettes ” and “Stop mine 03” in their fight against Imeris’s lithium mining project in Échassières. This year, we are working alongside the “Méga Canal Non Merci” collective to fight against the massive “Canal Seine-Nord Europe” project, which aims to connect northern European ports to Paris in order to facilitate imports for the agribusiness industry.
This conference will provide an opportunity to present these various projects, the challenges and successes we encounter in this work, and to spark a discussion about our attempt to reorient the field of architecture and architecture schools beyond the production of built structures.
Biographical highlights
Xavier Wrona is a co-founder of Architecture in a World on Fire, an educational initiative and media outlet dedicated to transforming architecture schools into institutions that champion nature. He is an associate professor at ENSA Saint-Étienne, where he also co-founded Après la révolution, an organization dedicated to applying architectural thinking to fields beyond the construction of buildings.
Xavier Wrona is an architect with a Ph.D. in architecture, aesthetics, art history, and art theory from the École Normale Supérieure in Paris, written under the supervision of Pierre Caye and titled: *Architecture and Knowledge, A General Economy of Architectural Knowledge Beyond the Production of Built Structures, from Vitruvius to the Present Day. He founded the firm Est-ce ainsi (2006–2017), an organization dedicated to refocusing architectural practice on its political implications and its role in transforming collective life. In 2010, the Est-ce ainsi firm was awarded the Albums des Jeunes Architectes et Paysagistes (AJAP) prize by the Ministry of Culture.
