The Normandy National School of Architecture and the ATE laboratory are publishing a book entitled Architecture et transmission des arts(Architecture and the Transmission of the Arts). This collective work, edited by Dominique Dehais, is the result of a series of study days held in May 2017 atENSA Normandie.

Summary of the book

Architectural education is composed of disciplines that contribute to the scientific, technical and sensitive scope of urban and landscape architectural design. The transmission of the arts, whether plastic, visual, theoretical or practical, is part of the educational corpus of architectural education. In its process, the Bologna Directive (EU 1999) includes the arts in the list of competences for the practice of architecture.

The contributions gathered in this book are a follow-up to the May 2017 study days at the École nationale d'architecture de Normandie. Through the singularity of their authors' didactic paths, they draw up a panorama of the issues and attitudes that give shape to the experience of art in order to understand and act in the creation of the artefacts that produce the reality of our living environments. Environments in which architecture plays a determining role.

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No. 4 of the RADIAL journal, linked to the RADIAN doctorate, on The Arts of Architecture proposes to rethink architecture as an art; starting with the art of building as the source of a poetics unfolding in the real, and also considering the other arts, such as literature, cinema and landscape, involved in the process of architectural creation. The RADIAN doctoral section contains essays by RADIAN doctoral students in "research and creation", and the VARIA section concerns composite research.

For all requests for paper copies, please contactEsadhar.

Recent publications, participation in thesis juries, events, field notes, calls for papers: find all the useful information in the Cahiers d'ATE, the laboratory's newsletter.

Anne Portnoï, Gabriella Trotta-Brambilla, (dir.), A laboratory of ideas for the city of Cherbourg-en-Cotentin, September 2021

Coordinated by Anne Portnoï, École nationale supérieure d’architecture de Paris-La Villette, and Gabriella Trotta-Brambilla, École nationale supérieure d’architecture de Normandie, this book reports on the work of students from ENSA Paris La Villette andENSA Normandie the Cherbourg-en-Cotentin area and its town center.

Dominique Lefrançois, Serge Wachter, Gouverner avec les habitants, Éditions Recherches, August 2021

Both representative and participatory democracy are in crisis today, and this particularly affects working-class neighbourhoods, where large social housing estates are concentrated. The involvement of residents in the policies that affect their housing and their living environment is, if not non-existent, at least very limited. Is such a lack of citizenship inevitable? No, because experiences of citizen mobilisation have been multiplying over the last few years, showing a growing awareness among residents of the issues at stake in the rehabilitation of their housing and public spaces in their neighbourhoods. At the same time, a participatory injunction, addressed to residents and users, is on the rise and is spreading to the various sectors of urban public action.
This book explores the merits and limitations of new instruments aimed at encouraging citizen participation in planning policies. Through an anthropological investigation, it also examines the barriers and possible means of improving the way in which the voice of citizens is taken into account in marginalized neighbourhoods. These reflections sketch out ways to implement new forms of local democracy that allow for governing with the inhabitants.

Caroline MANIAQUE, The Adventure of the Whole Earth Catalog, Les Productions du EFFA, 2021

The book tells the story of the birth, development and end of a "catalogue" that appeared in several versions from 1968 onwards, spread outside any traditional institutional and economic framework, sold more than a million copies in the United States and Europe and inspired European versions, notably, in France, Le Catalogue des Ressources. The Whole Earth Catalog informed its readers in very concrete terms about the latest research of the American counterculture on how to live differently: how to build a geodesic dome, make compost or design an architecture with a solar energy collection device, as well as the latest publications in the practical or scientific fields. The transformation of lifestyle was also addressed on a personal level, with, for example, the interest in yoga appearing in the background. The catalogue also combined an ecological approach, hippie sensibility and an interest in cybernetics. Paradoxically, it thus heralded the transformation of our societies by the new information technologies.