With the theme “Building”, the dossier for issue 136 of the ESPACE art actuel is interested in the future of architecture as a space of habitation by human beings within urban agglomerations. It wishes to question in what way architecture, as the creation of living spaces, always requires collaboration involving several participants including, if possible, the users. At a time when housing complexes are being built in the context of housing crisis, urban sprawl, unhoused people, the impact of climate change on our way of occupying the territory, the need to preserve the built heritage, but also the sometimes difficult cohabitation between cars and pedestrians, how can architecture, and more specifically urban planning, contribute to the implementation of a living space that positively influences our way of existing?

In Qu’est-ce que la philosophie? (Éd. de Minuit, 1991), Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari affirm that “architecture is the first of the arts”. For them, art does not begin with the flesh, but with the house. As a living space, this “house” is part of a territory that we share with other animals. However, the history of architecture has shown us that human housing has often been built by ignoring territorial contexts. Instead of being part of a relational architecture based on the creation of convivial spaces, architecture has often transformed its environment. As Olivier Barancy, author of Plaidoyer contre l’urbanisme hors-sol et pour une architecture raisonnée (Agone, 2022), reminds us, “many of the world’s cities are now designed not to meet the needs of their inhabitants, but to seduce developers and investors.” By turning away from its natural environment, by destroying it to supposedly build better, urban architecture disassociates itself from the territory with which it must deal. In the art of building, there is the duty to take care. There is the necessity to be attentive to what exists in the surrounding area. To counter modern architecture that is exported internationally, we adopt the “critical regionalism” that is faithful to the spirit of the place, especially that of its history. To build is to live in a place, to take care of the physical environment in which we are located. This is why, in his famous 1951 lecture entitled “Building Dwelling Thinking”, Martin Heidegger distinguishes the idea of housing from that of dwelling. To inhabit a space is not only to have a roof under the which to be sheltered. According to the philosopher, architecture should not be reduced to a service or an industry whose sole purpose is to build. Architecture must be considered as a field of intellectual research leading to a reflection on how to live together in urban agglomerations. Although it is primarily utilitarian, architecture must also promote the pleasure and pride of belonging to a social space where different lifestyles coexist.

More concretely, this dossier seeks contributions proposing the analysis of different architectural projects – past, present and future – that focus on the importance of better inhabiting the city, starting with its downtown, but also its neighborhoods, its public spaces, its parks and gardens. By inviting theorists and art historians, artist-architects, artist-urbanists or landscape architects, this issue focuses on the presentation of case studies that can offer new perspectives on the future of our cities, whether they be American, European or from any other continent. In 2015, the prestigious Turner Prize was awarded to an English architectural collective, Assemble, for its project to rehabilitate a neighborhood in Liverpool, UK. Other artist-architects, such as those of the firm Anne Holtrop or the Office Kersten Geers and David Van Severen, engage with the renovation of old buildings. With an economy of means, they carry out projects in symbiosis with the architectural history of the place. The MYCKET collective, a feminist group at the intersection of architecture, art and design, focuses on the development of an inclusive city, where sexual and gender diversity have an impact on the experience and design of the built environment. Finally, the French collective R-Urban develops urban planning projects that stimulate community life. These projects – urban agriculture, cooperative housing – promote the need to rethink new urban spaces considering various factors – ethno-cultural, gender, age, ableism – that can lead to new social experiences based on diversity. In his book Building and Living for an Ethic of the City (Albin Michel, 2019), Richard Sennet states clearly that living within an urban space requires “making the city more accessible, more egalitarian, and more sociable.”