nathan
cilona
info
200 plan libre : anatomy of an architectural journal
plan libre 200 : neither building nor demolishing
plan libre 198 : happy medieval time
plan libre 197 : tinies
plan libre 196 : roundabouts
plan libre 195 : disappointment of the form
new fictions for architecture
architecture’s photogenicity at the instagram era
altered memory of space
[coll.] synopsis
juliette picherit, portfolio
atelier d’architecture david huet
places
faces
jars
cover — loïs weinberger (photo : antoine espinasseau)
vision — natacha prioux
portfolio — julius von bismarck & marta dyachenko
poster — julie drane
project — alice rappeneau & loïc sizorn
investigation — jean-sébastien cluzel & masatsugu nishida
critic — charlotte malterre-barthes
plan libre 200
Neither Building Nor Demolishing
Designing without constructing and demolishing is not a posture of resignation. It is a hypothesis of architecture, no longer as the art of building, but rather as a strategy of consideration, repair, and requalification. Beyond the obvious "already-there," the authors of this issue explore and develop architectures based on displacement, replacement, and consideration.
At the end of the 20th century, the exhibition "Deconstructivist Architecture"01 announced the decomposition and fragmentation of an architecture conceived as a language. Architecture became the subject of architecture and celebrated its refinement, both conceptually and formally. Today, resources are scarce, and biodiversity is diminishing. Architecture is no longer the subject; it is its effects that concern us. In a few decades, humanity has constructed more buildings than in the past 300,000 years.
Construction is now dispensable. Not building is a project. Charlotte Malterre-Barthes suggests suspending construction through a moratorium. This cessation also offers the opportunity to establish a new and beneficial relationship between the economy, architecture, and work. The Ise Shrine in Japan can be an example of architectural practice that goes beyond the built object, beyond matter, and asserts itself as a ritual of care, a know-how of maintenance. The Ejectementary Place also testifies to this willingness not to build. By refraining from transforming our waste into new productive resources, it suggests new rituals, those of accumulating inert matter destined for an inevitable overflow. The works of the students who complement this issue hint at a new sensitivity for a liminal architecture, left at the threshold of tangible things, conceived as an act of maintenance, without concern for form or visibility.
Not building, not demolishing is not an admission of failure, but rather a possibility of reconfiguring affects.
Benjamin Lafore & Sébastien Martinez-Barat
This is a personal translation, it may vary slightly from the original version.
01 . Deconstructivist Architecture, Commissariat : Mark Wigley. Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1988.