“Modern” does not mean “monster”

At a first glance, many people would agree that modern architecture isn’t truly appealing. Surely, it’s not what our eyes are accustomed to labelling as beautiful. While nobody would question the heritage value of a Medieval castle or a Renaissance palace, how should we deal with the constructions of the recent post-war era, at a time when we’re also increasingly concerned about saving energy? Can we identify some specific qualities of these buildings – underestimated, yet no less valuable, features to be preserved?

These are challenging questions, and address not only the issue of architectural image preservation. Modern architecture often stands out for its original materiality and construction methods, reflecting a culture denoted by pioneering, experimental building technology. In addition, many 20th century buildings are now reaching the end of their first life-cycle, meaning they must be redesigned urgently in order to reduce their energy use and improve occupants’ comfort. Summing it up, we can say that today, modern architecture requires careful retrofitting proposals.

Abording each building as a unicum

The 15 years of research conducted by Franz Graf and Giulia Marino at EPFL’s Laboratory of Techniques and Preservation of Modern Architecture (TSAM) offers an encouraging starting point in this direction. The post-war building stock constitutes a huge built environment with lots of specific features. The key is to abord each building as a unique work, like in a haute couture redesign process. This approach aims to intimately understand each building’s original, hidden, and potential value in order to preserve it, while at the same time improving its energy efficiency. It’s a multidisciplinary exercise that draws on knowledge from different fields: construction history, building physics, chemistry, statistics, and more.

Working with what we already have can ultimately become the wiser – and maybe simpler – path towards sustainability.

Working with what we have

Thanks to this holistic approach, we can finally reconcile the two issues, which often encounter opposition, of architectural preservation and energy efficiency. It’s a design method that lets us preserve the original materiality of our building stock, promote architectural authenticity, and – in light of today’s resource scarcity – consider the built environment as a rich repository of grey energy to be conserved. Working with what we already have can ultimately become the wiser – and maybe simpler – path towards sustainability. This approach finally lets us re-think the very concept of sustainability, expanding its meaning to include the preservation of both environmental and cultural non-replaceable resources.

Dr. Giuseppe Galbiati, engineer-architect and former PhD student at EPFL’s Laboratory of Techniques and Preservation of Modern Architecture (TSAM)

• This article was published in April 2024 in three local dailies – La Côte (Vaud Canton), Le Nouvelliste (Valais Canton) and Arcinfo (Neuchâtel Canton) – under a joint initiative between EPFL and ESH Médias to showcase the R&D being carried out at EPFL on advanced construction techniques.