Read the interview in Construction21 with our expert contributor Aymeric Bemer, who provides insights into the nature of these challenges and how to overcome them. Get ready for a glimpse into the future of this ever-changing industry. From the impact of technology to sustainable building practices, don’t miss your chance to stay ahead of the curve and gain valuable knowledge !
“Building better by facing new challenges”.
Aymeric Bemer, an engineer and teacher specialising in energy and the environment, is responsible for optimising the environmental performance of projects at the Patriarche architectural office in Lyon. For him, we must make our cities resilient in the face of future phenomena and transformations.
This question alone reflects the crystallisation of the major issues of our contemporary era, echoing the depletion of resources, the multi-scale environmental impacts, and the recent globalised carbon quantification of our actions. It is as much a political as a metaphysical, economic, social, cultural, environmental and philosophical issue. The history of humanity is not to deconstruct. We must end the binary approach and try to understand this complexity with subjectivity. It is important to maintain our development in order to offer adequate services to maintain the health and safety of all, bearing in mind that the construction sector is certainly the most energy-intensive sector and the third most polluting, but it remains the main source of employment and the economic cog in our country. Even if, as in the Paris example, we were to express the desire to stop all new construction, we are in a society that is evolving and must remain resilient, so there will always be requests to extend a hospital wing to meet new needs or offer better services, to create crèches in neighbourhoods in high demand, to renovate a decrepit school, to create a planted public space to refresh the city centre, to create cultural centres and sports facilities, to create collective housing, to build infrastructures, etc.
It is possible to work to continue to improve our approach by dealing with the new energy, low-carbon and living issues. If we compare a building from the last century with contemporary constructions, we can observe an evolution in the quality of the structure, its accessibility, its thermal comfort, its energy performance, its air quality, the penetration of natural light, the risks to health, etc. The question is therefore no longer whether to continue to build, but how to continue to build better, while dealing with new structural challenges. Putting efficiency at the service of resilience. As globalisation has recently shown its weaknesses, national resilience must move towards a new internal organisation and must relocate its production and know-how. We must prepare ourselves to see the emergence of a national plan to this effect. In concrete terms, stopping building is not part of the programme, but we must continue to favour renovation and ensure that urban sprawl is controlled by de-silting and creating nature in the city.
From now on, we, designers and developers, must take care to harmonise the links between Man and the Living World. We must take care of the development. Our responsibility as builders, whatever the scale of our action, obliges us more than ever to reappropriate the consequences of our actions on our environment. This responsibility must be part of the curriculum of architecture and engineering schools, so that it is integrated into our approach and our projects. It is essential to curb urban sprawl and contain the artificialization of land, with a focus on the treatment of polluted land, it is a common sense consensus.
Biodiversity has never been in such difficulty and each sector of activity must work on its relationship with this situation in order to organise a firm and urgent change of course. It is now legal to develop virgin areas, but is it legitimate and fair to continue to do so in the face of the environmental context ? Citizen action is alerting and mobilising to act on this issue. Faced with this observation, the Anthropocene must take on a new face in order to give greatness to a century that is already well stained.
Interview by Stéphanie Obadia, Director of Construction21
No need to look any further,
receive all our news in your mailbox by subscribing to our Newsletter.
