Atelier Pascal Gontier

The scope and complexity of today’s environmental issues interrogate relationships between human societies and their environment. They thereby concern the very essence of architecture, and provide valuable opportunities to expand its usual fields of investigation beyond standards and best practices by engaging with research and experimentation. They also impel us to give new life to morphologies and devices of architecture and construction from which we have gradually moved away over the last century with the increased role of technology in buildings. Finally, these concerns invite us to view architecture not only as the well-known play of volumes brought together in light, but also as the play of sensorial atmospheres and materials, of time and space, of transience and permanence, of order and freedom, and of designers and inhabitants. With this in mind, the exhibition presents an architectural journey of twenty-five years in defense of sustainability, punctuated by achievements, projects, research, and experimentation.