Marc Barani: "Architecture is the science of subtle connections"

Marc Barani:Both. I started with anthropology studies. In the seventies, sociology held supremacy in schools, it was a very interesting movement. There was a lot of talk about politics, about social engagement, I was in a workshop in Marseilles redesigning the city, reprogramming it, I had this ambition to change the world. On the other hand, I seldom drew, I realized few projects. So we had the intellectual means to express ourselves strongly, but not the actual means of architectural design. I often wondered, and I was not the only one, what architecture could be. As I didn't have a very clear answer, I told myself that it would come little by little. I was attracted by anthropology, scenography, that is to say the plastic arts. For me, architecture was between sociology and art. The way in which people live, in which they are able to construct an eloquent environment in relation to their living environment, and on the other hand, the plastic, physical presence of spaces and buildings are the territory of architecture. I needed to distance myself; I could say that practicing in this field also means finding your optimal distance from the project. We have to get it right every time.

When I went into anthropology, not only did I get into anthropology, I spent a year in Nepal, in a small village in the Kathmandu valley, isolated, in another culture that was obviously completely different from the West; this actually allowed me to see more acutely what our Western society was about because I had that real distance there. I lived alone in this village, I learned the language, I was completely immersed in the Newar culture, which is a mixture of Hinduism and Buddhism. Once I came back, I defended my diploma with this subject, and then I studied scenography for 4 years at Villa Arson, in an artistic environment (it's an art school). There I was able to meet artists, observe their behavior, and eventually understand them. There is a lot of talk about the links between art and architecture, but they are not always so easy to perceive. They are, however, entirely different professions and methods. The risk of starting such endeavors is obviously to get lost. At one point I had the chance to take part in a competition on the cemetery of Roquebrune-Cap-Martin, which was our first project, which allowed me (it was a philosophical program, I was working with a philosopher - Jean Marc Ghitti) to reflect on death, the taboo of death, the relationship between nature and society, landscape and architecture. It was therefore an ideal project for me to be able to reintegrate into the West and begin my work. Today, to conclude the answer to your question, neither anthropology nor scenography has primacy. Let's say that anthropology comes rather at the beginning, in the series of analyses that consist in deciphering the context of a project. Scenography comes later, at the moment of shaping, in particular in relation to the question of the path, i.e. the way in which the body moves in an architectural space.

F.P.: Up until the 19th century, the word most often associated with architecture was order/rule/rule/law. Since we are trying to understand and manipulate the world, then we have to have the privilege of an order, a tool to make and maintain order, a baggage. In the 1960s, which you mentioned, thanks to some pertinent philosophers, the issues are no longer black and white, no longer dialectical, opposed. They blend, boundaries become vague concepts, problems become diffuse. If a young architect today were to ask: "What should I do with architecture in the world?", what would be the key word now?

M.B.: The key word... I think the issue of order is still a central one, it's just changed. It seems to me that we have a heightened awareness that today order is only a moment of disorder. It's a very important change of attitude. An order in motion is not an order fixed in self-sufficiency. Then, I think you have touched an important point in the need to stop thinking of architecture as a moment of rupture, of tabula rasa. We need to insist again on the continuity of the architecture movement. Obviously, there are new things, we have to imagine the future, that's always true, but I think we can also imagine it in a different way than in dislocation, and for this we have a definition of architecture that could replace Corbusier's, which we all know - "Architecture is the skillful, correct and magnificent play of volumes brought together under light". It's a liberating formula that the 20th century needed to renew architecture in relation to 19th century academicism. Today, I would be closer to a definition of architecture that has its origins in the Hindu tradition, which says: "Architecture is the science of subtle connections". First of all it is a science, therefore a body of knowledge that has a history. Then "subtle correspondences" evokes what you say earlier. We are in a system of interrelations, in a complexity of data or objects moving around, influencing each other; I like this definition, knowing that for Hindus, "subtle" means "magic". For Westerners, 'subtle' means what is sous le tissu, veiled, what we do not necessarily see. It means that architecture can pique our interest in something other than its visible form. This definition seems to me to be much more suited to the 21st century than the Corbusian one, which was fully useful in its time.

F.P.: It is mainly through this perception, which emphasizes the importance of action in cities, in buildings, in our homes, that we can detect an approach or, rather, an attitude that enables architects to act in a territory in movement?

M.B.: I think that this requires an analysis of situations, the clearest possible one, and it is not always easy to analyze situations, to see what compromises we have to make in order to realize a project. The architect's job is also to reformulate the question that has been put to us. It is rare that the question has been formulated perfectly. It has to be rephrased to suit the site, the society, the budget, the available construction techniques. The program is an essential element. It is important to question the program and see how we can make it evolve. In France, access to commissioning is very specific and I think that the architectural profession is quite protected here. Competitions are organized, we have a site, a program developed by professionals (who are called "programmers"). But a program has to develop with the project, it cannot float in the air, it cannot stand on its own, it has to materialize in a place. The first thing we do is to re-examine the program, to improve it together with the client, including during the construction site when we make small changes. It really is a process.

F.P.: We agree that nowadays the architect, instead of providing solutions, has to re-interrogate the data, but it is precisely this complexity of the data that makes a premise developed 20 years ago change profoundly. How do you feel about the idea that buildings are pretexts for this subtle process, that they are containers that can change precisely because their data changes over time?

M.B.: It's a question that we often ask ourselves because we are convinced that buildings need to be flexible, to adapt to a contemporary world in constant movement, but at the same time, if they are just adaptable structures, then it is difficult to talk about architecture. We have come to a point where, looking at the history of architecture, we can associate two doctrinal or theoretical attitudes that belong to it, which have not been brought together in their totality, it seems to me. The first consists, as the Archigram (group) did, for example, in imagining built spaces as neutral spaces, developing into three-dimensional structures in which inhabitants could live freely, invent new social bonds, a new culture. But these spaces were disconnected from the ground, as modernists were wont to do, suspended in the future. Les Smithsons said, for example: "This architecture can detach itself from the ground, it doesn't need land, it will float above the ground". We know today the failure of this concept. Then, there was a period in which there was a return to Genius loci, contextual architecture, the relationship between architecture and landscape. Now, it is very possible, in any case it is our objective - we have several emblematic projects (in this sense) - to have, at the same time, a neutral flexible space and a localized architecture, which belongs to a place and a site. I think we find here, at least for the studio, for our work, something stimulating in this approach. When we ask architects to give their opinion on the neutral, they reply that it is an unfortunate concept, that it is nothing, that it is outdated, but they are wrong. The neutral, debated in the theories of the time, was linked to Roland Barthes' intense neutral, and Barthes wrote some extraordinary texts about the intense neutral; the intense neutral is for him a place, before entering into the dichotomy of yes or no, or duality, that is to say it is a kind of matrix where everything is possible.

F.P.: It is a pulsation of the possible, that is the neutral.

M.B.: I like to rehabilitate such words.

F.P.: Because neutral doesn't mean the least sustained, but everything possible. It is a state, a fantastic condition.

M.B.: Exactly. I could understand more easily this matter of the intense neutral in Barthes because I was in India and there this notion is central.

F.P.: What could we imagine in a utopia of the use of spaces, let's say in 50 years, starting from the promise of public spaces that sometimes are not used as the project envisages? Are you rather optimistic, hesitant or accusatory about a scenario - in the near future, in 50 years' time - in terms of the use of public spaces?

M.B.: When we design public spaces, there are, however, a number of roughly invariable elements that we have to take into account. My point of view might be - I don't know what will happen to public space in the next 50 years - but what I do know, looking at history, is that in the processes of transformation of a city, public spaces often stay in the same place and their line moves very, very little, and this is essential. We are interested in everything that moves, it is normal, I am the first interested in determining what can happen again, but once again, if we don't have an antagonistic spirit, then we can look with the same acuity at how cities transform and what is permanent. We are about to study cities that have been razed by wars or colonization, or transformed in a rapid way. This allows us to observe some extremely simple phenomena: we realize that the lines do not move, that the routes are almost always in the same place, even after destruction, even in the rapid evolution of a city, the routes remain quasi-identical.

F.P.: Because the use of space remains the same.

M.B.: Because it's a public asset, it's undoubtedly more complicated to move it around, it's like the skeleton of a person. Then we have the land divided into parcels, i.e. the ownership of the land, which is the least changed, but it changes. What changes most rapidly, however, are buildings. Therefore, we realize that if we look at the city through the prism of the building, then we are not on a good scale, because the building changes the fastest, then the land, then the line. In terms of public space, there's this recognition of a vaguely slow evolution that you have to get to the point where you can detect it in order to design it. I always have a hard time with over-designed public spaces, disorganized things. They have to be available. At that point the community will occupy them or use them as they wish, and appropriate them. It is a place that must be free and where life can take shape that goes far beyond what we had imagined.... But for all this there is a real savoir-faire that landscape designers and architects have. Designing such places means working on the void, on its proportions, calibrating the flows, a whole series of things that make a space habitable or uninhabitable. Cultures, today in any case, express themselves most in public spaces, because when we say public space, we mean appropriable space. If you photograph buildings or city centers in Dubai or the United States or China, you will have the same kind of generic architecture, but if you demarcate public space, then you will see that Asia is very different in this respect from the West or the Middle East.

F.P.: It is desert-like in Dubai and very diffuse in Asia.

M.B.: And in Asia, people live everywhere, they colonize everything with incredible intensity. The emptiness really betrays the culture. In Nepal, for example, I saw something very interesting in the public space of this small village: there is no distinction between public and private, and there are no words for public and private. In front of the house there is an extension into the street which can be private depending on the agricultural, domestic or ritual activities. They include this part in the street, always leaving a small passage in the center. So it becomes private when they are beating rice, when there is a wedding or a religious ceremony for the household, but at other times it can be public in the sense that we can capture it. In other words, the street belongs to everyone and belongs to each and every one of us, depending on the everyday moments. This kind of mutation could be very useful in Europe if the density of cities increases.

F.P.: I'd like to know more about the concept of the exhibition you participated in, entitled "The fertile city versus human nature". I had difficulty understanding it. Does the concept take into account the difference between the mutations typical of the Eastern versus the stereotypical European or Western system? Are we talking about a fixed use, do we have to submit to the use of a space? I fail to understand, where does the word versus stand? What exactly does it denote?

M.B.: I wasn't the curator of this exhibition, but I think that it was mainly focused on the theme of the vegetal, that's why the term fertile comes up, that is to what extent the city of today is becoming vegetalized: gardens, public spaces, this unusual condition of nature in the city. I think we confuse vegetal with nature. They are two different things. And in the exhibition, we can clearly see how more and more, more and more everywhere, more and more projects include elements of vegetation. We live in a very interesting period, when for the first time, I think, we are visibly changing direction in urban civilization. I mean the vision we have today of nature is essentially urban. When you take a peasant as an example, the first thing he does, when he inhabits a space, is to make room all around, he cuts down trees to get a larger area of ground, to see the animals when they arrive. If there's a fire, then the house is not in danger of burning. If it's windy, the trees don't have to fall on the house, etc., so it makes a vacuum. Whereas city dwellers do exactly the opposite. They add green space everywhere, on walls, terraces, roofs. I was with Patrick Blanc in Brazil, we were talking, I said to him: "you are the first to translate and materialize this urban vision of nature". He's a specific case, he knows botany very well, but in general it's more a rather nostalgic vision of nature, there's a confusion between nature and plants. Nature is something else, nature is a force, it is something beyond us. It's still very difficult for us in Western civilization to imagine something that is beyond us, to make a contemporary judgment. Nature is stronger than us, it is important to harness its forces. When we talk about nature, we are talking about forces, we have to dialog with this system, not to try to dominate it, but at best to guide it in a specific way.

F.P.: Let us almost abandon ourselves...

M.B.: But the urban vision is still tributary to the 20th century. I believe that sustainable development will allow us to return to this idea of nature or of the natural site in which we are immersed, with which we can have a dialog, but which is not something that we can domesticate.

F.P.: One last question - do you think the architectural profession is in a state of crisis?

M.B.: It depends on the country.

F.P.: For example in France.

M.B.: Yes, it's getting difficult, even if architects invariably complain. Today, the biggest constraint is the normative aspect of architecture, we have more and more rules to follow, norms. It is essential to combat this phenomenon because the norm does not allow architecture to be realized, even if we understand more or less what it is trying to achieve. If we are in a situation of crisis, then the crisis concerns a profession that is renewing itself, rather in a positive sense, it is interesting to see how we can reconsider this professional activity. I was mentioning the 'vedetization' effect, there has never been more talk about architecture than at the moment, it is a benefit. On the other hand, the more we talk about spectacular, object architecture, the less influence architects have on cities, on social issues. So a balance has to be struck. Yes, talking about architecture is a good thing, provided that architecture is not reduced to design.

F.P.: In the 21st century, technical data, nanotechnology, the molecular development of concrete, textile materials that can do almost anything, these are all innovative elements that are moving at a fantastic speed. Standards, laws, building permits, technical control are much slower processes because they have to instrument, test, distribute into a system, back to canon. So how can you comment on the technical data available today, precisely from the point of view of this regulatory excess? Is it a conflict? Are architects experimenting?

M.B.: Behind the norm there is a lot of lobbying by construction companies, or those who manufacture various products, and the norm is an instrument of power, it gives supremacy to those countries that have the technology. From this point of view, we must fight the norm. On the other hand, we are dealing with a whole series of technologies, which produce new materials, but to use them in construction we need time to test them. It's an area of research where architects and designers are not present and that's a pity. Few people are really interested in finding out how to transfer these new technologies pragmatically into architecture or design. They are just starting, but it is very complicated. I am also of the opinion that we can do a very meticulous, very high-tech architecture, but today we should rather concentrate on the cottage industry, because new technologies mean business, a control of developed countries. I don't think we should delude ourselves. For the modernists it was a freedom. The relationship with technology has changed since then. Yes, of course, we have to develop new technologies, provided we can keep our freedom. The second point concerns the fact that architects nowadays tend to develop a complex on the notion of speed, hybridization, immateriality, whereas architecture is exactly the opposite. It takes time to realize it, if we try to rush, the buildings don't hold up, we see technical problems. It takes time to think, to conceive, for architecture to be sustainable. The time of architecture does not correspond to the time of our contemporary society. I like this idea - that architecture is extraneous to all these phenomena - because since there must be culture, there must be perspective. Architecture can, because of its distance from the sometimes absurd acceleration of things, offer a critical commentary on the evolution of our society. And in this sense, it concerns me, because without this critical commentary, the great risk is to take refuge in an ideology and avoid asking the crucial question about the future of our society.

F.P.: From the point of view of the markets, of the power of money in consumer society, do you think that the notion of housing in the 21st century is a product, is consumed as a product?

M.B.: I will come back to the question of new technologies, starting from a hypothesis that risks having a very serious impact on architecture. Nowadays, with the progress in medicine, it is hypothetical that in 2050 life expectancy will reach almost 120-130 years, and in good health, it is important. We can imagine that, by the end of the century, life expectancy will be 200-300 years. Suppose we live 200-300 years. The whole social system will explode. I could be an architect, then a doctor by the age of 100, then an artist, etc. There is a kind of atomic bomb that can possibly completely reconfigure a society, and then we are really talking about a radical transformative force, whose impact on architecture will be much more important than a novel textile. All this to emphasize: we need to pay attention to what is happening, there are some very high stakes for which we should be prepared and which are not talked about enough. As far as housing is concerned, in France, it has become an investment that we will pass on to our descendants. The home is no longer the place where we build our own atmosphere with our family, a way of life adapted to contemporary culture.

F.P.: Do you believe in the hypothesis that architecture will remain a cultural environment in a hundred years' time?

M.B.: Yes, I think it is part of its condition. It may not be the cultural environment that architects imagine. I was just mentioning Dubai, this absolutely incredible city that is above the ground, which was built without inhabitants! When you look at Dubai, you clearly discern the expression of a culture. So architecture will always be the expression of a culture, even if it's a culture that privileges money over human beings.

Marc Barani :I think it's both. I studied anthropology to begin with. In the 1970s, sociology had power in schools and it was a very interesting movement. There was a lot of talk about politics, a lot of talk about social commitment, and I was in a workshop in Marseilles where they were redesigning the city, reprogramming the city, they had this ambition to change the world. On the other hand, we did very few drawings, very few projects. So we had the intellectual tools to take a stand, but not the means to actually draw architecture. I wondered a lot, and I was not the only one, about what architecture could be. As I didn't have a very clear answer, I finally told myself that it would come little by little. I was attracted by anthropology and scenography, that is to say the plastic arts. For me, architecture was situated between sociology, the way in which people live, the way in which they are able to construct a meaningful environment in relation to their lives, and on the other side, the plastic, physical presence of spaces and buildings. I needed distance; I could say that doing this job is also about finding the right distance from the project. You have to manage to assess it each time.

When I took up anthropology, I didn't just learn about this discipline, I went to live for a year in Nepal, in a small village in the Kathmandu valley, isolated, in another culture which was obviously completely different from that of the West; this enabled me to see much more acutely what our Western society was like, since I had a real distance there. I lived on my own in the village, I learned the language, and I was completely immersed in the Newar culture, which is a mixture of Hinduism and Buddhism. Once back I graduated with this work and then I did four years of scenography at Villa Arson, in an artistic environment (it's an art school). There I got to meet artists, see how they work, and then understand them. There is a lot of talk about the relationship between art and architecture, but it's not always as obvious as that. They are very, very different professions and ways of thinking. The danger of taking such steps is obviously to get lost. At one point I was lucky enough to be able to do a competition on a cemetery in Roquebrune-Cap-Martin, which was our first project and which allowed me (it was a philosophical program, I was working with a philosopher - Jean Marc Ghitti) to reflect on death, the taboo of death, the relationship between nature and society, between landscape and architecture. So it was an ideal project to reintegrate myself in the West and to be able to start my activity. Today, to finish answering your question, neither anthropology nor scenography take precedence over the other. Let's say that anthropology comes rather at the beginning, in the series of analyses which consists in deciphering the context of the project. Scenography comes later, during the shaping stage, in particular in relation to the question of the route, i.e. how the body moves through the architecture.

F.P.: Until the 19th century, the word most associated with architecture was order. Because we're trying to understand and manipulate the world, we have to have some kind of order, a tool, a baggage, something like that. In the '60s that you have just mentioned, following the relevant philosophers, questions are no longer black and white, no longer dialectical, no longer opposed, they are mixed, limits become concepts, become diffuse. If a young architect asks today :

"What am I doing with architecture in the world? "what is the key word now?

M.B.: The key word... I think that the question of order is still central, except that it has changed. It seems to me that there is a more acute awareness that today order is only a moment of disorder. This is a very important change of attitude. An order in movement is not an autarkic fixed order. Secondly, I think you have touched on something important about the need today to stop thinking of architecture as a moment of rupture, of a clean slate. We need to reinsert the continuity of the architectural movement. So obviously there are things that are completely new, we have to think about the future, that's always obvious, but I believe that we can think about it in a different way than in terms of rupture, and for that there is a definition of architecture that could replace the one Le Corbusier gave us all know - "Architecture is the skillful, correct and magnificent play of volumes in the light". It is a liberating formula that the 20th century needed in order to renew architecture from the academicism of the 19th century. Today, I would be closer to a definition of architecture that comes from the Hindu tradition: "Architecture is the science of subtle correspondences". First of all it is a science, therefore a body of knowledge that has a history. Then "subtle correspondences" evokes what you were saying. We are in a system of interrelation, in a complexity of data or objects that move and influence each other; I like this definition, knowing that for Hindus, "subtle" means "magic". For Westerners, "subtle" is what is "under the fabric", what we don't necessarily see. This definition seems to me to be much more appropriate for the 21st century than the Corbusé definition, which was quite useful in its time.

F.P.: Particularly in this perception which gives importance to processes in cities, in buildings, in our houses, is it possible to grasp an approach or an attitude which enables the architect to act in a territory in movement?

M.B.: I think that first of all it requires the clearest possible analysis of situations, and it's not always easy to analyze situations, to see what "bath you're in" in order to be able to make a project. The architect's job is also to pose the question we are asked. It has to be rephrased in the light of the location, the company, the budget and the construction techniques available. The program is an essential element. It's very important to re-examine the program and see how it can be evolved. In France we have special access to commissions and I believe that the profession of architect is fairly protected. We have competitions, we have a website, we have a program drawn up by professionals called "programmers". But a program must evolve with the project, it can't just float in the air, it can't stand on its own. It must be embodied in a place. The first thing we do is to reinterrogate the program, to rework it with the project owner, including during the construction period when we are still modifying little things. It really is a trial.

F.P.: We do agree that now, instead of providing solutions, the architect has to question the data, but it's precisely this complexity of data that sometimes means that a premise that was worked out 20 years ago changes so much. What do you feel towards the idea that buildings are pretexts of this subtle process, they are containers that can change because precisely their data change over time?

M.B.: This is a question that we ask ourselves a lot because we feel that buildings must be flexible, they must be able to adapt to a contemporary world that moves a lot, but at the same time if they are only adaptable structures, it is difficult to talk about architecture. We are now at a point where, looking at the history of architecture, we can merge two doctrinal or theoretical attitudes to architecture which have not, it seems to me, been completely merged. The first consisted, as Archigram did for example, in envisioning built spaces as neutral spaces, developing into three-dimensional structures, where inhabitants could live freely, invent new social links, a new culture. But these spaces were disconnected from the ground, as moderns were used to, suspended in the future. The Smithsons said, for example: "This architecture can detach itself from the ground, it doesn't need the ground, it will float above the ground". Then there was a period when we went back to genius loci, contextual architecture, the relationship between architecture and landscape. Now it is quite possible, in any case it is our objective - we have a few projects that can be emblematic of this - to have both a neutral flexible space and localized architecture, which belong to the place and the site. I think there is something exciting in this approach, at least for the studio in any case, for the work we do. When architects today are asked to take a position on neutrality, they say that it's a bad concept, it's nothing, it's gray, but they are making a contradiction. The neutral, which is at work in the theories of the time, was linked to Roland Barthes' intense neutral, and Roland Barthes wrote extraordinary texts on the intense neutral; for him, the intense neutral is a position before we enter into the dichotomy of yes or no, or duality, in other words it is a kind of matrix where everything is possible.

F.P.: It's a vibration of the possible, that's what neutral is.

M.B.: I like rehabilitating words like that.

F.P.: Because neutral is not the least committed, it's the entirely possible. It's a state, a fantastic condition.

M.B.: Exactly. It was easier for me to understand this question of the intense neutral in Barthes because I'd been to India and this notion is central to them there.

F.P.: What can we envision in a utopia of the use of spaces, say in 50 years, on the promise of public spaces that sometimes are not used as planned in the project? So, are you optimistic, hesitant, or incriminating towards a scenario in 50 years as regards the use of public spaces?

M.B.: When designing public spaces, there are a certain number of invariants that have to be identified. My attitude could be the following - I don't know what public space will be like in 50 years' time - but what I do know from looking at history is that in the process of transforming a city, public spaces very often remain in the same places and their layout moves very, very little, and that is essential. We're very interested in everything that moves and it's quite natural, I'm the first to be interested in spotting what can happen again, but again if we're not in a dual way of thinking, we can also look with the same acuity at how cities are transforming and what is permanent. We are studying cities that have been razed to the ground by war or colonization, or transformed very rapidly. It allows us to see very simple phenomena: we realize that the layouts do not move, the roads are almost always in the same place, even after destruction, even in the rapid evolution of a city the layouts remain more or less identical.

F.P.: Because the use of space is the same.

M.B.: Because it's public property, it's probably more complicated to move it, it's like a person's skeleton. Then there's the parcel, i.e. the ownership of the land, which is more difficult to change, but it does change. What changes most rapidly are the buildings. So we realize that if we look at the question of the city through buildings, we are not on the right scale, because it is the buildings that change most rapidly, then the land, then the layouts. In the question of public space, there is this recognition of the long underground process that we have to be able to identify in order to be able to design. I always have a lot of difficulty with over-drawn public spaces, with things all over the place. They have to be available and from then on, society will occupy it or do what it wants, it will appropriate it. It's a place that must be available and where life can be embodied, which goes far beyond what we had imagined. To design such places is to work on the void, on its proportions, to calibrate the flows, it's a whole series of things that make the space habitable or not. It is in public space that, today at any rate, we see cultures incarnate themselves most, because when we talk about public space, we are talking about appropriable space. If you take pictures of buildings or city centers today, whether in Dubai, the United States or China, you have the same kind of generic architecture, but when you reframe it in the public space, you see that Asia is very different from the West or the Middle East.

F.P.: Because it's desert in Dubai, it's very diffuse in Asia.

M.B.: And Asia inhabits every nook and cranny, with great intensity they colonize everything. The emptiness really reveals the culture. In Nepal, for example, there was something quite interesting in the public space of this small village: there is no difference between public and private, they don't have a word for public and private. In front of the house there is an extension into the street which can be private depending on the agricultural, domestic or ritual activities. They insert this part into the street, always leaving a small passage in the center. So it becomes private when they thresh the rice, when there is a wedding or a religious ceremony linked to the house, but at the same time at other times it is public, in the sense that we mean it. That is to say that the street belongs to everyone and to everyone according to the moment. This kind of change may very well be useful in Europe, if the density of cities increases.

F.P.: I would just like to question the concept of the exhibition in which you participated, which is called "The fertile city versus human nature". I have difficulty understanding this concept. Does this concept take into account the difference between the typical mutations of Eastern versus a fixed, European or Western system? Is it a fixed usage, one must obey the usage of space? I fail to understand, where is the word versus? What does it denote?

M.B.: I wasn't the curator of this exhibition, but I think that it was centered above all on the question of vegetation, that's why the term fertile comes up, i.e. how the city is becoming vegetated today: gardens, public spaces, it's more like green spaces, it's more like this new condition of nature in the city. I think that people confuse plants and nature. They are two different things. And in the exhibition you can see all the projects today where there is more and more vegetation everywhere. We are in a very interesting period in which, for the first time I think, we are really clearly moving towards urban civilization. That is to say that today's view of nature is essentially urban. When you take a peasant, the first thing he does when he lives in a place is he clears all around, he cuts down the trees to have a large soil, to see the animals coming. If there's a fire you don't want the house to burn down. If it's windy, he doesn't want the tree to fall on the house etc., so he clears the area. Whereas urban dwellers do the opposite. I was with Patrick Blanc in Brazil, we were talking, and I said to him: "you are the first person who has been able to translate and embody this urban vision of nature". He's a specific case, he knows botany very well, but in general it's more a kind of nostalgic vision of nature, and people confuse nature with greenery. Nature is something else, nature is a power, it is something that is beyond us. It is still difficult in Western society to envisage something that is beyond us, to make it a contemporary thought. When we talk about nature, we are talking about forces, we are talking about dialoguing with this system, not trying to master it, but at best to guide it in a specific way.

F.P.: To surrender almost...

M.B.: The urban vision is still very 20th century. I believe that it is sustainable development that will enable us to get back in touch with this idea of nature or a natural site in which we are immersed, with which we can interact, but which is not something we can control.

F.P.: The last question - do you think the architectural profession is in crisis?

M.B.: It depends on the country.

F.P.: For example in France.

M.B.: Yes, it's becoming difficult, even if architects are always complaining. Nowadays the biggest constraint is the normative aspect of architecture, which means that there are more and more rules and standards to be observed. We have to fight this phenomenon because the norm does not allow architecture to be done, even if we more or less understand what it is trying to achieve. If there is a crisis, there is a crisis in the sense of a profession that is renewing itself, rather in a positive way, it's interesting to see how today we can rethink the profession. Earlier we were talking about starization, architecture has never been talked about as much as it is today, which is a positive effect. On the other hand, the more we talk about spectacular, object architecture, the less influence architects have on cities, on social problems. So there is a new balance to be found. But the fact that we talk about architecture is all very well, as long as we don't reduce architecture to design.

F.P.: In the 21st century, technical data, nanotechnology, the molecular development of concrete, textile materials that can do anything, so all this is an element of discovery that is moving at a fantastic speed. Standards, laws, building regulations, state inspections have a very slow speed because they have to instrument, test, distribute in a system, get back to standards. So, how can you comment on the technological data available now precisely in view of this load of standards? Is it a conflict? Are the archi-tects experimenting?

M.B.: Behind the standard there is above all a lot of lobbying by the building companies, or the people who manufacture the products and the standard is an instrument of power, and it is a power of the countries that have technologies over the others. From this point of view, we have to fight over standards. Then there is now a whole series of technologies that produce new materials, but to be able to use them in the building industry, it takes time to test them. But there is a real area of research in which architects and designers are not present, and that is a pity. There are few people who are really interested in how these new technologies can be realistically transferred into architecture or design. I also think that we can create very high-tech, very high-tech architecture, but today it is more on the craftsmanship side that we should refocus, because as soon as we talk about new technologies we are talking about business, we are talking about the developed countries controlling the others. The relationship with technology has changed compared to the moderns. Yes, of course, we need to develop new technologies, but on condition that we can keep our freedom. The second point is that, more generally, architects today tend to make a complex on the notion of speed, hybridization, immateriality, whereas architecture is the opposite of that. It takes time to do it, if you try to go faster, you realize very quickly that the buildings don't stand up, that there are technical problems. It takes time to think, to design, it has to be sustainable. I like the idea that architecture is alien to all these phenomena because for there to be culture, there has to be a point of distance. Architecture can, through the distance that separates it from the sometimes senseless acceleration of things, propose a critique of the evolution of our societies, and it is in this sense that I am interested in architecture, because without this critique, there is a great risk of falling into ideology and avoiding the crucial question of the future of our societies.

F.P.: Just from the point of view of the markets, the powers, the money of the consumer society, do you think that the notion of housing in the 21st century is a product, is consumed like a product?

M.B.: Let me come back to this question of new technologies, starting from a hypothesis that is likely to have a very serious impact on architecture. Today, with the progress in medicine, we are working on the assumption that in 2050 life expectancy will be around 120-130 years, and in good health, that's important. We can imagine that by the end of the century life expectancy will be 200-300 years. Let's imagine that we live to be 200-300 years old. The whole social system is going to explode. I could be an architect, then a doctor until I'm 100, then an artist etc. There is a kind of atomic bomb that could potentially lead to a complete rethinking of society, and here there is indeed a force of radical transformations, the impact of which on architecture will be far greater than a brand new textile façade. All that to say: we have to be attentive to everything that is happening and there are big issues at stake for which we will have to be prepared and which are not talked about much. On the question of housing, in France it has become an investment product that we pass on to our children. Housing is no longer the place where one builds with one's family a specific environment, a way of life adapted to our contemporary culture.

F.P.: Do you think that in the hypothesis of a hundred years from now, architecture remains a cultural milieu?

M.B. : Yes, I think that is part of its very condition. Having said that, it won't necessarily be the cultural milieu that architects envision. I was talking about Dubai, this absolutely incredible city above ground, which was built without inhabitants, after all! When you look at Dubai, you have very clearly the expression of a culture. So architecture will always be the expression of a culture, even if it's a culture that prioritizes money over being.