The territory as transformation: a renewed actuality

At a time of climatic urgency, shrinking resources, and environmental crisis, awareness of the multiple consequences of the urban sprawl of recent decades is leading to the promotion of territorial strategies aimed at preserving natural environments and arable land by reorienting the built environment towards the interior as a priority. This approach is not limited to city centers, but also concerns multiple territories located in vast and heterogeneous urban fringes.

The creation, reinforcement, or regeneration of neighborhoods with a density subtly adapted to the context, a fine mix of functions, and a decarbonized interconnection with the rest of the territory constitute, in this sense, a promising strategy to which the architectural project can decisively contribute. These issues are at the heart of the teaching and research work carried out at the Laboratory of Architecture and Sustainable Technologies (LAST) and grouped in the TRANSFORMATIONS box set.

As Bruno Marchand points out, it is a question here, again and again, of "working with existing resources, of revisiting places that are already urbanized, at complementary scales and under the seal of transitions towards sustainability. "The territory and architecture as transformation" : a renewed actuality."