Nicolas Atlé & Michel Prégardien
A Shed at Designers as ‘interpreters’,
experiential reflexivity and ecological perception in architectural learning.
ABSTRACT
The ecological crisis and the Covid crisis show that reality is not malleable at will and that it is necessary to take into account the constraints inherent in reality. This reflexivity linked to reality engages a modification of the project design process which passes from the use of constituted knowledge to the experimentation of knowledge in the process of being permanently constituted in the face of realities, a permanent learning process to be developed with the students. Following the example of jazz, between standard and improvisation, let us envisage the conception by a principle of “constraints/resources” with a practice of “interpreters” between constituted knowledge and experimental knowledge.
Through this principle, pedagogy by doing and project workshops become complementary, allowing the development of an experiential reflexivity. We will present two pedagogical practices that we carry out within the UMons: The L’occaux 21 project, a platform for experimentation and a place for collaboration between academics, professionals and citizens, where together we made temporary structures from reused or slightly transformed materials. The aim was to understand the interest of taking advantage of these materials, of their affordances, as a basis for design. The practice of the 1st bachelor project workshop where students are called upon to “solve” an architectural complexity within a very restrictive framework (arbitrary like the rules of a game), obliging them to set up a project process based on these said constraints.
By diverting the material and conceptual ‘constraints’ into ‘resources’ for the project, the students are led to understand that the constituents of the project (material, technique, etc.), of its manufacture (worker, user, etc.), of its very existence (time and the patina that sets in, etc.), constantly modify the project, before and after its execution, and become resources rather than constraints as soon as the designers open up the design process to the possibilities, integrating life with its permanent movement of construction/ deconstruction.
BIOGRAPHIES
NICOLAS ATLÉ
Is a workshop assistant for urbanism projects and a PhD student at the Department of Architectural and Urban Engineering of the Polytechnic Faculty of the University of Mons. He graduated as an architect at La Cambre in Brussels in 2008, and in 2011 he obtained the title of project manager at ENSA Montpellier. He worked as a freelancer between 2009 and 2017 in Paris and has produced installations, furniture and urban scenographies as a member of the XXI collective since 2005, in France and Belgium. His research on the issues of adaptation and flexibility revolves around the following themes: plasticity and circularity (reusability, reversibility, lifespan, etc.), ecosocial design, eco-philosophy and affordances. Since 2017, he has been experimenting with pedagogy through making, in relation to these research themes, within the framework of UMONS and inter-university workshops. In particular, he was in charge of the project L’OCCAUx 21, in collaboration with the city of La Louvière in the framework of the “Imagine your city” program (Belgium, 2018-2020).
MICHEL PRÉGARDIEN
Is a professor at the Department of Architectural and Urban Engineering of the Polytechnic Faculty of the University of Mons in the field of history, theory and composition. He is also a professor at the Faculty of Applied Sciences at ULiège in the field of renovation and heritage. Michel Prégardien graduated as a civil engineer-architect in 2002 from the University of Liège. He did his internship at the architecture and engineering firm Maximilien Cornet from 2002 to 2006. From 2006 to 2014, he was an assistant architect at ULiège and became a PhD in Art of Building and Urbanism in 2013, with a thesis entitled “Forms and forces. Conceptual reading of architectures through related disciplinary fields”. In 2006, he founded the Prégardien architectural firm and in 2014 he also became part-time project manager at the Administration des Ressources Immobilières de ULiège. Since then, he has won the Architecture and Urbanism Award of the City of Liège: in 2017, for the Jonquilles house (Bureau Prégardien), and in 2019 for the EEEF renovation of the Sart Tilman university campus (ULiège-ARI).