Potential of Contemporary Architecture
Carole Lemans
This doctoral thesis in architecture focuses on the potential of the "reed" resource in contemporary architecture, taking into account both the issues related to the sector and its actors, the constructive and performance dimensions, and the possible registers of expression.
Firstly, the potential of contemporary thatched architecture is examined in relation to the distance from traditional thatched roofing forms and techniques. This is followed by a theoretical evaluation of the limits and potentials of the material today, built notably by observation of the Dutch context. These elements are then confronted with a set of contemporary realizations, apprehended on the one hand according to the morphological analysis of an extended corpus, and on the other hand through a more restricted number of case studies and the discourses which accompany them. The assumption that contemporary thatch architecture is ecological is only partially correct. The realization of its potential actually requires certain conditions to be ecologically effective.
The second part of this thesis is deliberately prospective and proposes to study through experimentation the potential of reed architecture, and no longer thatch: can we make this material more ecological? It presents three project situations seeking to innovate with reed, two of which are specifically developed within the framework of the thesis. With another level of reading on these experiments, we observe the influence of the level of knowledge, concerning the reed and the thatch technique, on the performance of the design process.
The thesis observes and documents more than a hundred buildings from the year 2000 to 2021. The field of study, mainly focused on France, also extends to Europe and to a lesser extent to Japan, where the climate is more or less similar to the French climate. To another extent, the current French thatching industry being little documented, the field investigation by learning the practice of thatching constitutes an important part of the knowledge contribution.
important part of the knowledge contribution, leading today to the constitution of a network of actors of the reed.
