Individual housing and sustainable landscape, an impossible marriage?
The ENSA of Paris La Villette publishes a book titled "The individual house. Towards sustainable landscapes?" Specialists from various fields (architecture, law, economy, geography, sociology, urbanism, landscape and engineering) are brought together in an innovative way and invited to bring viewpoints on issues specific to this type of habitat. Amongst the authors, one can find Prof. Emmanuel Rey of the Laboratory of Architecture and Sustainable Technologies (LAST).
Space and energy consuming because of the proliferation of infrastructures and the induced mobility, the individual house appears in many ways as the counter-example of sustainability. This book brings to light multiple problems related to this type of widely spread habitat, but also encourages, by various viewpoints, a complex reflection combining different scales: the inside of the house, its envelope, the plot on which it lies, the landscape in which it is embedded.
Arise then several lines of thought to make this type of habitat a potentially sustainable entity: preserving the balance between natural areas and inhabited areas by the approval of responsible rules, the technical improvement of envelopes and equipment required by successive thermal regulations, an improved training of professionals, the sharing of certain facilities, the introduction of innovative governance solutions, landscape conservation considering the green and blue grids. An international perspective by evoking practices in the Vorarlberg (Austria), in Switzerland and in Japan, completes this reflection and opens new possibilities.
Published by the "Editions de La Villette" under the supervision of Yann Nussaume, Aliki-Myrto Perysinaki and Jahanna Sery, the book gathers texts notably by Augustin Berque, Guy Tapie, Philippe Madec, Pascal Aubry, Dominique Gauzin-Müller, Emmanuel Rey and Alban Mannisi.