Unveiling the workshops selection and the tutors, selected for their varied professional backgrounds

Du Monday 5 February 2024
au Friday 9 February 2024
workshop
lauréats
winter school

The Winter School is an intensive week-long exercise that gives more than 250 students from the school and from all around the world the opportunity to work collectively and across disciplines around the theme chosen by Thibaut Barrault, curator of this 9th edition: "The Forms of Reuse".

Entitled in French "Les Formes du Réemploi", the Winter School will be looking at issues related to re-use, re-purposing and recycling. The first method focuses on function, the second on form, the third on matter, but they all structure a more indulgent approach to the material heritage that surrounds us. These processes are all methods and techniques for reclaiming waste, commitments to combat obsolescence, tools for giving a second life to the objects and materials in our environment, and possible readings of the territories in which we work.

Winter School 2024 workshops descriptions

01. Architectures apparentées

What could be built from the deconstruction of Alison and Peter Smithson’s Solar Pavilion or Gustave Eiffel’s famous tower? Our starting point is this dreadful yet exhilarating hypothesis. Thinking up a reuse project based on a singular resource: the deconstruction of an iconic building from the history of architecture. Based on a meticulous and exhaustive inventory of its constructive elements, we aim is to invent a new spatial design. This work of recomposition, redistribution and hijack of objects will be carried out with the idea of accommodating a new program, a different function from its initial reference.

Supervised by Éva Maloisel and Jean-Benoit Vétillard

Peaks is an architectural practice founded by Eva Maloisel in 2015. The office confronts its practice with different project scales: landscape, equipment, housing, scenography, furniture - with the desire to propose architecture with ambiguous contours, articulating autonomous forms and contextual objects, science of detail and bricolage. Peaks sees each project as an open question about the practice of architecture, through the manipulation of the conditions of its production, its formal vocabulary, its programming and its material

Jean-Benoit Vétillard graduated from the École Nationale Supérieure d’Architecture of Brittany. Since 2009 he has been developing a series of personal projects ranging from devices and art/scenography to housing. The approach is non hierarchical, each project manifesting different scales of art, scenography and architecture. In 2014 he founded is own studio. He is now teaching at the École d'architecture de la ville et des territoires de Paris Est and the École des Beaux Arts d'Angers. He is laureate of the Album des Jeunes Architectes et Paysagistes 2018, and 40 under 40, in 2019.

02. Communards

As part of the "forms of re-use" workshop, Communards" is an experiment in bridging theory and action within architecture schools. We draw inspiration from two significant historical events: the Paris Commune of 1871 and the emergence of the popular movement in 1968.
Here we will tackle reuse under a wider conversation around human labor, post-capitalistic production, alternative value systems in order to escape the fetishization of reuse as an assemblage of materials.
The Zone des Communards will be the scene of a collective process to create a common ground within the school. From this ground emerge devices and uses that convey a language of struggle. The common ground of this spatiality lies in the ability to inhabit and activate the school as a resilient, dynamic and living place.

Supervised by Giuseppe Felice Greppi, Pietro Franceschi and Lawan-Kila Toe
Giuseppe Felice Greppi has worked as an art gallery assistant, photographer, cultural mediator and architect. He founded Zattere, a collective of architects working on the practical side of the profession, bringing together the designer and the builder in a single figure. His latest work delves into the process of unveiling abandoned objects produced by construction sites, offering a meditation on these ecosystems. He was assistant professor at the Politecnico di Milano for two years.

Pietro Franceschi grew up in Milan and studied Architectural Design at Politecnico di Milano. He currently works as architect in Berlin. He co-founded Zattere in 2021, and since then has been carrying out research with the collective focusing on genius loci, economy of means, self-construction, reuse and the life cycle of building materials. Zattere’s processes also involve observing construction sites, looking at them as a starting point, with an ‘explicit’ architectural nature.

Lawan-Kila Toe is an HMONP architect and a graduate of ENSA-Versailles. For several years he has been working in an architectural practice with Philippe Rizzotti architectes and the collective (in)visible on the question of the additive and subtractive force of architecture, as well as on the resilient design of ground and subsoil architecture. Since 2022, he has been teaching in the master’s programme at ENSA-Versailles en Projet as a contract professor.

03. Composer (avec) l’ordinaire

The lights go out and the theater opens onto a set of objects that come to life. Cabins, homes, schools, stations, warehouses parade to compose an Italian capriccio. We can discern components with a certain familiarity. A feeling of rapid, diffuse déjà vu melted into ageless forms inhabits the representation. This scene of reuse illustrates the temporal trajectory of the resources collected in the ultra-ordinary and extraordinary buildings of the territory of Marne-la-Vallée. The decor links the resources atlas to collages exploring the possible trajectories of a resource. On stage, new architectural compositions take shape throught ordinary resources told into a story.

Supervised by Adèle Sorge and Aurélien Rabary

Adèle Sorge, Tout terrain partner, devotes herself to composing the dialogue. On the one hand, it combines strategy, acquired through her master’s degree in political science (SciencesPo), and deepened during her experience in project manager at the city of Paris. And on the other hand the manufacturing, the construction, the manipulation of the concrete material where the hands are at work, to model projetcs with its architectural and urban vision, and ensure their construction (Éav&t Paris-Est 2017).

Aurélien, graduated of Ensa de Paris-Est and a partner in Obras architectes, is interested in the representations associated with environmental transition and their capacity to engage new relationships with territories. He manages architectural and urban projects that share a contextual, sensitive and pragmatic approach, and in which cultural and technical aspects contribute to more sober urban objects.

04. Dirty Spolia

Spolia are ambivalent and question the prosaic and symbolic dimensions of the reuse of building fragments. Their primary origins, the conditions of their acquisition and the reasons for their reuse constitute a trajectory of reappropriation that imbues the building in which the spolia have been placed with a subtext to be interpreted. In this trajectory, what meaning can architecture give to the ordinary fragments handed down by modernity? Dirty Spolia is organized into four stages: the collection of artifacts in the territory; their photographic restitution; their shredding to obtain a building material; and finally the construction of a pergola from this material, inside which intact spolia are inserted. In short, the appropriation of a fading culture.

Supervised by Vanessa Pointet and Thibaut Pierron
Vanessa Pointet studied architecture at BTU Cottbus and ENSA Lyon. She worked with Alexander Römer and Constructlab (2011), Guyard Bregman (2011-2012) and Bureau A (L. Banchini, D. Zamarbide) in Geneva and Lisbon (2013-2017). Since 2018, she is teaching in EAST, M. et A. Fröhlich’s laboratory at EPF Lausanne. In 2023, she joins the master’s program éléments, structure & architecture at Ensa de Paris-Est. In 2018, with Thibaut Pierron, she founded the architecture practice Sub.

Thibaut Pierron studied architecture at TU Berlin and ENSA Lyon. He worked with LIN in Berlin (2013), Johnston Marklee in Los Angeles (2014) and Bureau A in Geneva (2015). Since 2021, he holds a PhD with a doctoral thesis supervised by K. Geers at EPF Lausanne. He taught at ENSA Lyon and Ensa de Paris-Est. Since 2022 he is teaching in TEXAS, É. Lapierre’s laboratory at EPF Lausanne. In 2018, with Vanessa Pointet, he founded the architecture practice Sub.

05. Future Concrete

As an alternative to the «tabula rasa» model applied to post-war Great Reconstruction sites, the Future Concrete workshop will draw on age-old techniques of reuse and recycling to focus on the valorization of architectural concretes resulting from deconstruction. Students will experiment with materials from a demolition site close to the school to create a collection of new materials, shapes, and structures dedicated to crafting furniture for public spaces, particularly seating. This is a way to magnify (for the commons) a dormant deposit that is widespread and unappreciated in the collective imagination, due to its contemporaneity and standardization.

Supervised by Anna Saint Pierre, Audrey Guimard and Éliane Le Roux
Anna Saint Pierre works on the memory of places through the collection and reuse of demolition materials. Trained as a textile designer, she defended her SACRe thesis entitled « Textilisation of Built Memory» in 2022. Her research was supported by the ANRT to be integrated into projects of the architectural agency SCAU (2018-2021). Since then, she has been undertaking artistic projects in public spaces in collaboration with all those involved in the construction site.

An artist-sculptor and scenographer, a great admirer of nature and a fervent advocate of raising awareness of the ways in which art is created and experienced, she approaches space in all its dimensions, from the monumental to the object. Working with stone enables her to create committed collective projects, bringing to light quarry waste rock and materials collected in nature with incredible potential and ancestral know-how.

Trained as an architect, Eliane is a graduate of EPFL. Since 2008, she has been working with Bureau Bas Smets as the agency’s artistic director. She defines the conceptual essence of projects and their graphic imagination. In 2014, she co-founded Studio Undr in Paris. For 6 years, she dedicated herself to events for the fashion and luxury industries. In 2023, she set up Rocas, a studio dedicated to stone that explores stone in all its scales, from quarry to public space, and from scenography to

06. Gargouille et crapaudine

Returning to the question of ornament, which has never been so contemporary.
It’s a return to a way of thinking that has been lost with modernity, to question a series of elements and technical installations that have not been thought through and are often subjected to by contemporary buildings, in order to make them visible and magnify them. The gargoyle has been associated since Antiquity with the mascaron, a large grotesque mask representing the head of a man or an imaginary figure. The presence of these elements in the Middle Ages and during the Renaissance was as much a functional necessity, linked to the drainage of water, as it was a symbolic protection for the building against evil forces.
Transposing an object from its familiar context to another, in such a way that this otherness raises the question of the essence of the object.
Preventing a perception of things dictated by habit by working with banal, ordinary, ugly materials that are generally used for places out of sight.
As Loos wrote in Paroles dans le vide, «The Venus de Milo would be just as valuable if it were made of gravel - in Paros the streets are gravelled with marble from Paros - or gold.

Supervised by Ana Miscu and Thomas Sindicas
Ana Miscu graduated in 2014 and is now a practising architect in Marseille, after nine years with the Parisian practice NP2F. Driven by a critical vision of architecture, her research has led her to question emerging forms of practice in the profession and existing obsolete programmes.
Thomas Sindicas is a visual artist and architect. By turns a graphic inspector of contemporary toll barriers (with his series of drawings of toll booths in the Paris region), a topographer of the soundproof walls that encircle Greater Paris, a spectre-architect of the glorious thirties for the purposes of a dramatised tour of a motorway interchange, this inveterate surveyor of the interstices confronts his subjectivity and his questions with the mutations of the urban fabric and the inhabitants of its surface.

Thomas Sindicas, is a graphic inspector of contemporary toll barriers (with a series of drawings of toll booths in the Paris region), a topographer of the soundproof walls that encircle Greater Paris, a spectre-architect of the glorious thirties for the purposes of a show around a motorway interchange, an inveterate surveyor of urban interstices who, in his creations, confronts his questions with the mutations of the urban fabric and the inhabitants of its surface.

07. Georges Perec, Human Algorithm

The act of transformation allows us to take a fresh look at the objects that surround us in our daily lives. Like any other type of design, this action can be based on a rigorous method, a set of constraints and rules that structure the creation. The workshop will focus on the study and experimentation of these creative processes: transformation will be approached from the method rather than from the object produced.
Georges Perec, who developed tools and methods based on play and constraint, will be our starting point for exploring these processes.
Based on an analysis of his novels, we will develop a sequence of exercises and try to answer them, letting the defined programmes guide us towards unpredictable responses, in the manner of an ‘artificial intelligence’.

Supervised by Rosalie Robert
Rosalie Robert is an architect and associate professor at ENSA Paris-Est.
She graduated as an architect in 2013 at ENSA Nantes, then she worked with Bruther architects before founding her own practice in 2016, in Paris. She holds a DSA Architecture et Patrimoine from ENSA Paris-Belleville and a Post-Master Recherche en Architecture from HESAM Université. In 2023, together with architect Léa Cottreel, she founded RREEL, an architecture office which focuses on all types of interventions on existing buildings, from the restoration of protected buildings to the reconversion of rural or industrial heritage.

08. Intérieur mousse

Foam, although invisible, almost always covered, protected, is a constituent of our interiors. It makes them comfortable. Like a case, it ends up retaining the memory of the positions of each and every one within the household. An inexhaustible deposit of waste - 4 million mattresses are thrown away every year in France -, foam is nevertheless a malleable material, with properties developed by half a century of cutting-edge research in the aerospace sector and the bedding industry. Intérieur Mousse proposes to divert these properties to give foam the shape and imprint for new domestic uses. The experimental manipulation of this plastic material is thus an opportunity to remodel the relations we have with our intimate spaces and their objects.

Supervised by Julia Tournaire and Antoine Kersse and Pauline Degrand-Guillaud
Julia Tournaire obtained a state diploma in architecture at ENSA Lyon in 2011, and a diploma in social and linguistic sciences at EHESS in Paris in 2019. After working at DOGMA in Rotterdam, and l’AUC in Paris, she co-founded Institut Palmyre in 2017. She teaches or has taught at Ensa de Paris-Est (2018-22), ENSA Nantes (2022-23) and ENSA Bretagne in Rennes (2019-23). She is also co-editor-in-chief of the journal Habitante and a member of the semantics collective Programma.

Antoine Kersse obtained in 2012 a state diploma in architecture at ENSA Lyon, a CAP MENUISERIE-AGENCEMENT (Carpentry and Design) in Paris in 2018 and the HMONP validation in 2019 at ENSA Versailles. After having worked for the Monadnock and MVRDV agencies in Rotterdam, and Brunet Saunier Architecture in Paris, he co-founded Institut Palmyre in 2017. He was assistant to the Studio Widerski at the Ensa de Paris-Est (2016-17) and participated in the INDA summer workshop in Bangkok in 2017.

Pauline Degrand-Guillaud graduated as an architect in 2011 from the Faculté La Cambre Horta in Brussels and was awarded the title of Architect in 2014 (the Belgian equivalent of HMNOP). She then worked with several agencies in Belgium and the Netherlands, including MVRDV, De Vylder Vinck Taillieu and Agwa. Since 2018, she has been working at the Barrault Pressacco agency in Paris as project director. Since 2022, she has been teaching architectural design at La Cambre Horta in Brussels.

09. Le Cours des Choses

In the manner of artists Peter Fischli and David Weiss in their film Der Lauf der Dinge (1987), Le Cours des Choses invites us to create new situations and interactions between objects and reused materials through a large-scale chain reaction. The raw materials are sourced from the Ressourcerie du Cinéma in Montreuil’s Mozinor complex, which recuperates elements from old movie sets in an effort to promote recycling and a circular economy. To capture the system in its entirety, the students will create a sequence-shot film in which gravity, assembly and movement will play the leading roles.

Supervised by Camille Gineste and Gwennaïg Rougetet
Camille Gineste, architect and urban planner, blends territory and architecture in her practice. Continuing her studies in the Fragments master’s program at EAV&T Paris-Est, she now works for the architecture and urban planning firm LIST. She assisted Thibaut Barrault in his project studio at EAV&T.

Gwennaïg Rougetet is a graduate architect from Ensa de Paris-Est. In her practice, she seeks to reconcile architectural, urban and societal issues, with a particular focus on the right to housing. She is committed to these issues through both associations (with the Compagnons Bâtisseurs) and militant action.

10. Les techniques oubliées

Circularity often evokes the visible elements of a building, but what about its technical layer? Though briefly adressed in «Elements of Architecture» by R. Koolhaas, techniques are rarely considered as architectural elements in their own right, despite their abundance and crucial role in crafting the comfort of our buildings. Overlooked by architects and concealed in finishes, these techniques also escape the interest of reuse networks, often leading to their inevitable incineration. The “Forgotten Techniques” initiative proposes a radical change of perspective to give new functions to these neglected technical elements. Using assembly and weaving methods, it reconnects with the fundamental techniques that G. Semper described as the hallmarks of craftsmanship, which is now forgotten.

Supervised by Vivien Camus, Flore Fockedey and Matthieu Perin
Graduated in 2013 of Ensa de Paris-Est, Vivien Camus is now a practicing architect in Brussels, working in part for MDW Architecture. His projects have led him to work on the assertive aesthetics of architectural techniques, as well as on bio-sourced materials and circularity in construction.

Graduated of La Cambre-Horta / ULB (BE), Flore Fockedey is an architect/designer based in Brussels. She is interested in surfaces, the materialization of what circumscribes an occupied volume. Although she often uses textiles, her projects are not limited to them. She considers that a surface is created by assembling or adding a module, whether woven, knitted or interlocked. This implies working closely with the specific characteristics of the material used. She has been teaching at La Cambre since 2023.

Graduated in 2015 of UCL Tournai (BE), Matthieu Perin is now a practicing architect in Paris, part of whose practice is done at the Barrault Pressacco’s office. His subjects of study, in his practice, require material and resources. He took part in research on hemp concrete following his experience on the construction site of the building rue Marx Dormoy.

11. Material models as forms of reality

Design processes are usually divided into concept, formalistic development, practical prototyping and production. Nowadays, formalistic development occurs mainly virtually. It happens while the designer choses from limited ranges of predictable software menus. The few material models that are actually made at the end of the process, are usually schematic, intended only for display. Thus, the only actual-material interaction is not meant to contribute to the creative thinking, but only as a façade. Above that, often these models are non-recyclable/degradable. In light of this, the proposed workshop seeks to encourage formalistic development while working with diverse ready made surprising materials towards creative solutions that contribute to diverse, actual and ecological design thinking.

Supervised by Einat Leader
A goldsmith, lecturer, researcher and curator, writes about the creative process, jewellery and craft history and pedagogy. Associate Professor at the Bezalel Academy, Jerusalem. Jewellery and Fashion department head in 2005-2013. Leader has has received awards and participated in many exhibitions, lately in the 20th International Silver Triennial (DIVA, Antwerp); co-curated the Bezalel exhibition at the Design Museum, Munich and currently exhibiting at Ha’Ir Museum, Tel Aviv-Jaffa.

12. Sample architecture

Borges asserted that no one can claim originality, all writers being merely «translators and annotators of pre-existing archetypes». The creative process thus involves the subjective and contextual appropriation of an existing reality, reformulated and presented under a new skin. Creation through reuse and imagination. Following this principle in a playful and experimental way, we fight obsolescence. Like a composer, the inspired architect can theoretically and physically deconstruct any object in order to hijack it and bring it back to life into a new piece that will directly impact its spatial environment. We live in a time of new associations made up of a multitude of existing elements. Now comes the rule of sample architecture.

Supervised by Romain Iff and Pierre Musy
Romain Iff studied and worked in Washington, Lausanne, Barcelona and Paris. He graduated in architecture from ETHZ in 2022. His reflections flourish in the apparent instability of liminality, his creations dealing with the drift of elements, the fragile balance of their masses and forces. His projects range in scale from the design of a holiday home, to the temporary construction of an atelier, or the sculptural alteration of borosilicate tubes.

Pierre Musy is an ETHZ architect and video artist. He is fascinated by the impact and alteration of (ir)-real narratives in everyday life. His practice focuses on the conception of (un)built space through social exchanges or the practice of rituals. His thinking is based on the observation of an intertwined world in order to reveal collateral realities. He is also co-curator of the independent art gallery BELLA (Zürich) and a member of the collective XENIA.

13. tiles

Much of reused materials are serial and repetitive in nature : ceiling and carpet tiles, bricks, paving stones, ceramics, etc. They need to be paved or tiled, a profoundly architectural gesture. As JJ Gibson explains in "Ecological Approach to visual perception", the structure of surfaces is fundamental to our perception of our environment.
This session of the Winter School will tackle the theme of tiling. We will introduce the week with a mathematician's description of the theory of periodic tiling of the plane. The students will then choose a real space to tile, with a specific material, commonly available on reuse platforms. They will present their work through textured models and hand drawn plans.

Supervised by Gaspard Clozel and Laura Chérubin
Gaspard Clozel graduated in 2014 from Ensa de Paris-Est. Since then he has worked in various Parisian architectural firms, most notably for five years with Jean-Christophe Quinton, then at Atelier Martel, on housing and small public programs. He passed his HMONP in 2022. Since may, as a an architect, he has been working on personal projects while continuing my collaboration with other practices. He is particularly interested in the way construction and use lead to architectural forms.

Laura Chérubin graduated in 2014 from Ensa de Paris-Est. She then sought specialisation through the urban planning DSA. Early on she based her approach on existing structures and foms, and her sensitivity on use and materials, in order to develop contextual and contemporary propositions. Her career has been marked by practice that build environmentally friendly and sustainable projects, with a strong lean toward the use of bio-sourced materials.