Anna Chavepayre, invited as the patron of the first-year class, will give a conference at the start of the academic year exploring the connections between ecology, economics and generosity, and more specifically, the connections between beauty, goodness, meaning and the commons. Impact and opportunities: these words highlight a central problem in rehabilitation today, which is driven more by constraints and impact management than by creating opportunities and questioning our desires. Architecture is inherently concrete and relational, yet we find that our system of standards, rules and calculations, intended to safeguard our common good, environment and heritage, has the opposite effect. It creates disconnected tools that take into account neither the specific situations to which they are applied nor the setting and unique characteristics of buildings. For example, what can be said about applying the same rules and thermal calculations everywhere in France? Does adapting buildings through extensive calculations and generalized approaches not deprive them of their distinctive features, atmosphere and soul? We are facing an ecological and economic crisis in which we lack resources at every level (materials, land, wildlife, plant life); what we do still have, however, is time. Time to carry out specific analyses and give each building the respect it deserves. It is up to us to invest our time and energy where they matter most. Collectif Encore is an architecture and landscape design practice based in Auterrive (64), at the heart of a region where rural life, the coast, mountains, heritage, agriculture and industry coexist. Led by Anna and Julien Chavepayre, it has spent more than ten years developing an approach centered on transforming places, uses and human relationships. The practice works on a wide variety of projects: a flour mill converted into a shared community space, a château transformed into social housing, a school complex, a village presbytery, offices, an artists’ residence and individual homes—a deliberate diversity based on the conviction that projects overlap, enrich one another and build an intimate knowledge of the region that specialization cannot provide. This approach increasingly allows the practice to handle the programming of its own projects. Rehabilitation, reuse, frugality, care for the living world, shared governance and mixed uses form the foundation of its approach. Each project is viewed as a resource capable of delivering more than its original function alone: creating social connections, strengthening regional autonomy, revealing forgotten heritage and accommodating new ways of living. Through its projects, teaching, conferences and public initiatives, Collectif Encore advocates for a generous architecture grounded in reality—one that favors transforming what already exists over wiping the slate clean and, in doing so, seeks to restore the commons and enable new ways of shaping a shared territory. Conditions: Free admission with registration Registration: https://www.montpellier.archi.fr/evenements/conference-danna-chavepayre-collectif-encore/ Provided by OpenAgenda SAS
Event from the official Montpellier calendar; venue: Anto events; address: 179 rue de l'espérou, 66270, Montpellier.
Source: Agenda Montpellier