Lorsque j’étudiais l’œuvre de Robert Le Ricolais, la performance des structures était particulièrement dictée par l’idée du poids, et ce à travers l’adage : « portée infinie, poids nul ».
L’idée de progrès était fondée sur le rapport entre géométrie et système statique à travers une performance quantitative sur les matériaux mis en œuvre. Pourtant l’idée de frugalité retrouve aujourd’hui toute son acuité dans un monde ou l’attention aux ressources naturelles devient prégnante, dans une architecture ou l’attention au monde prend tout son sens. La conception des structures en architecture se fonde donc sur cette idée d’appartenance, où le projet puise, dans son regard sur le monde, sa signification dans une attitude généreuse et raisonnée.
Notre travail se situe donc à cette rencontre de manière sensible.
An art of transformation
Although this may seem tautological, it is important to remember that construction occurs using materials that we find in the world and then radically transform, through both extraction and use, during a long cycle that, from landscape to extracted landscape, transforms, constructs, destroys, and mobilizes a significant quantity of material and energy.
Transforming this use of materials into tangible materiality, expressing the delicacies of a given atmosphere, means that architecture is an art of responsible transformation, with significant meaning attached to its landscape, construction, ecological, and social dimensions. If we deviate here from the pure field of constructive rationality, it is to situate it within a broader perspective, where the previously mentioned idea of frugality belongs to a longer historical tradition. Our projects address contemporary issues. As architecture belongs to the cultural domain (architectural culture, technical culture), it must act responsibly.
An architecture of belonging
The projects that we develop have always been based on two elements: location and the expression of labor through transformed materials. The lessons of landscape are present everywhere: they determine a project’s conditions in its situated development, a view that makes the latter a specific and not generic object. The expression of labor via transformed matter contextualizes a project within a constructive dimension that goes beyond assembly, but establishes itself as memory through implementation.
Create a place and a link
The projects that we complete all ascribe to the premise of connection, by creating shared spaces where the public space is always at the center of architectural and urban design. The public realm is always a shared space, a space to represent the society that we are building: a democratic space. It is thus the work of a link maker that I am describing here: creating links that go beyond the abyss that separates men from each other, creating spaces so they can share the world that brings them together.
Marc Mimram