Gastprofessur Stéphanie Bru

"Today, energy saving is more important than ever. This imperative challenges us as designers of living spaces. The spaces and buildings that we imagine, design and build must not be too expensive. While maintaining a real quality of comfort. 
Unfortunately, this concern for comfort often remains rather theoretical at the time of the conception and design of a future building. It is assumed that the electricity and heating issues will be resolved at the end of the building site, with purely technical connection plans.
However, the very idea of heating can be integrated very early in the architectural project. The way in which a building is heated inevitably has an impact on its spatiality and its use. Of course, this attention is not so obvious. If heating is nothing more than the circulation of air at the right temperature, how do you design that air? We are in the realm of the impalpable. But doesn't the value of architecture lie in this "unutterable space"?
If it seems difficult to draw air or particles, we can reflect on their impact. In what way can hot air propagate a space? What are the spatial consequences of such diffusion? We can go back to the original meaning of the term "hearth": the place where a fire is made. By extension, the (sometimes sacred) "heart" of a building.  But, from this "heart", what kind of irrigation takes place? Will it necessarily be the same in every season?  
We must once again trust our epidermal sensations, precious indicators of the sensitive variations of space. We can envisage architecture as an interlocking of "bubbles" of intimacy. The façade of the building is the first protective envelope. The clothing we wear is the last. In between, other 'envelopes', other 'bubbles' can appear in a more or less visible way.
These variations may or may not be in tune with the rhythms of the seasons, the variations between day and night, the degree of partitioning of intimate spaces. The modulations are multiple. They call into question ready-made typologies and allow the invention of new uses, always in the service of the pleasure of living.
Housing is not a fixed entity, but an organism that vibrates. It is crossed by different dynamics: folding / unfolding, expansion / contraction. Re-examining the question of heating highlights these almost secret forces. And it is precisely by relying on these
forces that the architecture of the habitat will find its right "breathing".
 

PHASE I: MYTHOLOGIES 
PHASE II: FINDING FREEDOMS
PHASE III: BINDING FRAGMENTS

Studio on wednesdays in room 312
Introduction on Tuesday, 18.10.2022 at 11:30 am in room 312