Ethics, Aesthetics, Cosmopolitics: Discover the article by Émeline Curien

To mark the publication of A+319 – Reclaiming Beauty, Émeline Curien's article, published in Inventaires #5, is shared exclusively here, resonating with the issue's reflection on the notion of beauty.

Ethics, Aesthetics, Cosmopolitics

Émeline Curien

Every architectural gesture, even those that may seem rather anecdotal, is the depository of multiple forms of attention to the worlds of things and beings. A ‘molecular analysis’ of these ‘investments of desire’ that construct and transform buildings speaks volumes about the intentions that drive those who create our living environments.

Micropolitics of prescription:
 when it comes to choosing tiles

In the dozens of kitchens renovated in the old housing units built in 1961 for married police officers and that make up the Général Jacques project (Karbon’ architecture et urbanisme/Label Architecture), the same grey tiles—leftover stock for which no buyers were found—complement the preserved floor tiles, which vary in colour and size. Their fairly neutral colour works well with all the existing tiles, taken as such, with their patina and history. The challenge of this maintenance operation is to get inhabitants to accept that, when the housing units are completed, they won’t match the standardized aesthetics of new builds. In the toilets of the boules court at Pierre Paulus park (Ledroit Pierret Polet Architectes/Pigeon Ochej Paysage), new, light-green tiles measuring 10 × 10 cm play with the existing pinkish glazed stoneware tiles measuring 60 × 60 cm. The two rhythms combine, intersect and clash, the reciprocal colours harmonize with one another, and ‘deliberate accidents’ stage this encounter between the different layers of the space’s intimate life. The priority in this discreet plastic research is the ongoing requirement to create, within tight budgetary constraints, living spaces that also appeal to our senses. A composition of orange tiles, a frieze with oriental decorations and a green line at the bottom and top ornaments the bottom of the walls of Cassonade (residents of the Duchesse neighbourhood in Molenbeek-Saint-Jean). It is ‘merely’ a pattern painted on MDF panels, a leftover set element from the series La Bonne Terre, which previously housed the community restaurant. When it moved in 2024, it became obvious that this scenography should be taken to the new location, with the help of the neighbouring association Decoratelier. The value of these fake tiles lies not in their material authenticity, but in the attachment that regulars and supporters have developed for them.

Social recognition of existing structures, attention to the sensuality of living spaces, consideration of attachments: these situations respond to a deteriorating economic context, significant social vulnerabilities, and the destruction of the fabric of life, by nurturing certain forms of relationships with the world, formulating and reformulating specific links between ‘social ethic’ and ‘architectural aesthetic’.

The politics of drawing:
 architectural writing produces matrices of meaning and sensitivity

The drawing that gives a building its appearance—materials, textures, colours, assemblages, details, etc.—interprets reality, creates symbolic and sensitive matrices, and further establishes ambiguous and complex power relations between different cultures and sensibilities. The façades of Maison Jupiter (V+ architecture/Paul Mouchet [Central]/Sophie Dars [Accattone]), the VDB building (Vers.A, 2021) and the Kurth building (Olivier Fourneau Architectes) thus seek to establish continuities and permanencies within the human world and its urban fabric. The neoclassical bourgeois heritage of their immediate neighbourhood, the care taken with their brick detailing and tectonic articulations appear in these three new buildings. However, since it is also customary to assert one’s contemporary identity, various modulations play on traditional styles in order to update them for new uses.

The interventions designed by AgwA to house the dance and theatre school Insas in a former garage from the 1930s are still visible: the heterogeneous nature of the existing structure was preserved, along with its imperfections. A patchwork of materials in a wall left bare or exposed ironwork following a hole made in a slab, the intervention, on a tight budget, creates an aesthetic of economy. Under the envelope of an existing hall, the kiosks designed by Vanden Eeckhoudt-Creyf architectes for the paving and horticulture training centre Masui 186, on the other hand, engage with the industrial and raw language of the exposed masonry blocks. However, particular attention has been paid here to the design of the fine line, at a constant height, which follows the lower part of their roofs. The dance of the sheet metal profiles plays with the rhythm of the pavilion façades, a way of introducing coherence and elegance into a project which, for the rest, takes on ‘the colour of things’.

While AgwA gave up any search for harmony, trusting instead in spatial generosity and its ability to meet the needs of users, in the work of Vanden Eeckhoudt-Creyf architectes, the dignity given to the careful shaping of the material seeks to communicate itself to the community of learners welcomed onto the premises.

In Dailly house (Mamout architectes), the architects’ opportunistic approach combines, with the utmost attention to detail and technical resolution, elements from the deconstruction of a workshop (metal beams, wooden beams, bricks, etc.), exposed terracotta block masonry, concrete arches and lintels, and even reused elements from outside the site (marble skirting boards, etc.). In the project Laeken attic, the team took care to preserve the existing roof structure, a surprising assemblage made from various reused parts. The project relies on this eclectic assemblage, preserving both its material and spirit to create a home. The joyful aesthetic of complexity and contradiction, like that described by Denise Scott Brown and Robert Venturi, runs through the project, which was jointly built with the couple living there. The design and building process draws its energy from the pluralization of agencies: existing materials and reused elements, but above all, the extensive involvement of the client in the design and self-construction.

In Dailly house, the architect, who is building for himself, is free to compose contrasts between raw elements and highly refined details, thus achieving maximum visual impact. The attitude of L’équipe, which rejects ‘illusory purity based on the smoothing-out of plurality’, questions the status of the designer and accepts that decisions may escape them.

This montage of seven projects expresses seven different attitudes towards the world—humans, things. Urban heritage, the materiality of existing structures, stocks of reusable materials, the desires of residents and the designs of architects take turns to express, in the built or repaired forms of architecture, who they are and what they want to experience.

Establishing the space of the common:
 it is not just a question of spatial strategies and supporting structure

Aesthetics is not only a matter of architectural design, but is also perceptible in the processes, lights and relationships established by the project. Intervening in an existing structure, opening it up or redesigning it, also means making with it, helping it to find a way to connect once more with the new communities that will inhabit it. Similarly, in new builds, the design of a load-bearing structure creates relationships, opens up—or closes off—degrees of freedom, appropriation and adaptability: it materializes a political attention for the future inhabitants of the space. Thus, by selectively dismantling the gestures that have become sedimented over time in the Royal Museum of Art and History, Elmēs, in their Garden Palace project, uncovered a Japanese garden that was hidden from view yet lies at the heart of the building. Panels covering up openings, false ceilings and scenographic supports are removed or rearranged. These acts of subtraction aim first and foremost to restore to the existing structure its intrinsic qualities. In the new Aube bakery (Bauclub), the introduction of sectional doors makes it possible to hybridize the spatial logic of a former garage, a building that is part of the neighbourhood’s memory, with that of covered market stalls. This technical device allows the counter to open onto the public space and extends the history of this ordinary productive place.

For its part, the exposed CLT panel structure organizes the series of school renovations and new builds—Jette, Gosselies, Schaerbeek, Herseaux—carried out by a practice. This structure is part of a pragmatic combination-based approach, the fruit of research and development initially undertaken to replace the prefabricated buildings that house classrooms in many schools. This architectural toolkit is put to the test in each situation: in this composition of rooms that meet current standards, forms of generosity immerse themselves in patios and in the interstices between the specificities of the existing structure and the rigour of compositional principles. By contrast, the structural framework of Le Trèfle school in Templeuve (Central) makes plenty of room for workshops with original and generous spaces, which emerge from the skyline drawn by the roof. The load-bearing framework varies according to the situation: a red cruciform post marking the hall, round columns set back from the façades or in break areas, rectangular posts changing direction depending on their surroundings. The aesthetics of the complex structural ecosystem, caught between rationality and surprises, underlines the vitality of this architectural educational tool aimed at a vulnerable population.

A rigorous framework, structural elements derived mainly from reuse and demountable assemblages make up the Pavillon Westpark (Skope/collectif dallas). The extensive roof, under which a heated box has been tucked away, is designed to welcome local residents so that they can express their wishes for the future park. The hope is that this bricolage-based aesthetic, together with the open, transformable and demountable nature of the pavilion, will encourage residents to appropriate the space. An assemblage that can be reconfigured endlessly, this proliferating architecture of racks, created with Decoratelier in front of the community restaurant Cassonade, forms a double façade incorporating stairs, seats, balconies, passageways and storage spaces, shapes that can grow according to multiple and contradictory needs. Giving people the opportunity to create a living environment, independent of administrative and controlling structures, is a source of empowerment for one and all. In these last two situations, the form given to the architectural structure seeks to communicate to residents the desire to transform their lives collectively.

By designing or repurposing ordinary places, these spatial constructions try not to reinforce exclusions and feelings of abandonment, both spatial and social. They establish new common spaces and are aesthetic and political, in the sense of Jacques Rancière: ‘Politics, in fact, is not the exercise of power and the struggle for power. It is the configuration of a specific space, the division of a particular sphere of experience, of objects designated as common and subject to a common decision, of subjects recognized as capable of designating these objects and arguing about them.’

Cosmotechnologies:
 choosing a material resource contributes to building worlds … or destroying them

‘The choice of material is as much a matter of ethics as it is of aesthetics. Ethics: the relationship to the resource, to the places and techniques used to extract it, to the negative externalities of its exploitation on the environment, to the people called on for its implementation. Aesthetics: the result of its implementation, texture, colours, comfort. Ethics as much as aesthetics: the social recognition of the material that is passed on to those who live in the place. The choice of a material and its implementation is thus part of a cosmotechnology, a certain arrangement, a folding or braiding composed of humanity, the living and the non-living, temporality, technology, knowledge and information, energy, the material and the spiritual, etc.’ Rotor DC, a cooperative company that resells salvaged construction products and surplus materials from building sites or producers, was involved in many of the projects presented here. It essentially exploits a new ‘mine’, that of deconstruction, in order to make the dismantled elements available in the form of a catalogue—an evolving catalogue with which the actors must synchronize themselves. To ensure that these elements do not become just another product, they must be reused with ‘care, patience and a sense of dialogue with the material, which allows us to redefine, in and through the act of doing, an ecosystem of relationships that unites us with things, with others and with the world’. Thus, it is by using materials collected at the end of the production line at Rotor DC—those ‘unworthy’ elements that cannot be reintroduced into the reuse market—that artist Quentin Lemarchand created his temporary workshop, La dent de scie, which is as much a work of art as it is a space for living. His work aims to sublimate this waste: marble slabs, through which light passes, regain their intrinsic value in this new arrangement, for example. In the Grow project, involving the installation of offices for Ici architectes in the heart of an urban block, the architects are seeking alternatives to concrete by exploring so-called sustainable materials (hemp, clay, cork), reuse (tiles and stones), by-products (shells set aside in glass manufacturing) and ancestral techniques (lime slabs). These materials are mainly left exposed and are also chosen for their contribution to creating specific environments—acoustic, thermal or hygrothermal.

In Vivo (whose driving force was Bento and Vinciane Despret), conceived for the 18th Venice Biennale, also contributes to this quest to expand material resources: mycelia, grown for the occasion in Brussels, were used to construct panels. Vinciane Despret, Christine Aventin and Juliette Salme seized the opportunity to imagine, in their book Living in Mycelium, a profound transformation of our relationship with the living: these mycelia could communicate with us—signs, messages, thoughts, emotions. This work of science fiction invites architects to break with the idea of ‘a world at their disposal, whose living beings, other than humans, now formed a vague landscape, now a useless or annoying obstruction, now resources to be extracted and consumed—the world, exploitable at will, of “matter”’. This book paves the way for a cosmopolitical questioning, a ‘politics of being in relation’, the challenge of which is to expand the domain of community beyond the human sphere, recognizing ‘the agency of non-human beings, whether living or not’.

These practices in the Wallonia-Brussels Federation are illustrative of a plurality of attitudes towards the social, environmental, cultural and even cosmic responsibility of design, a multitude of ways of making stories, lives and things present, or not, and numerous ways of incorporating them into the materiality of our living environments. Various ethics and aesthetics are intertwined in a cultural ecosystem which, though often lacking economic resources, is rich in relationships, where clients, existing buildings, associations, cooperatives, lights, resident collectives, reuse products, project managers, materials and artists attempt to work together and help each other to create architectural worlds that are political and sensitive and in which ‘lives worth living’ can be woven together.