EMmanuel Macron said it: rehabilitation must become the primary principle of the city’s factory. Hammered in a speech delivered on March 4 at the Cité de l’Architecture et du Patrimoine, in Paris, this message came to support the operation “Quartier de Tomorrow” whose names of the finalists were revealed that day.
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If its ecological scope is largely neutralized by the avalanche of antagonistic measures which have been swept away since the beginning of winter – detachage of the policy of zero artificialization, budgetary economies on the ecological transition -, it had the merit of alerting the role of architecture in the rehabilitation of the old buildings.
While this sector takes an increasing part in the construction activity, the architects are in fact largely excluded. The thermal renovation operations that multiply to improve the results of energy performance diagnostics are most often implemented by works companies that are content to draw from a catalog of labeled materials by seeking to minimize costs.
The result is a standardization of urban landscapes (same facade materials, same windows, same doors, etc.), as much to say a deterioration in everyday heritage, without warranty with regard to the comfort of the habitat or the intrinsic quality of the materials used.
Search for “consonance” between old and new
On the contrary, the role of the architect consists in working in finesse with everything that is there: the orientation of the building, the natural air circulation of the air depending on whether or not the parts are crossing, the nature of the local climate, the availability of materials in short circuit, the aesthetics of the urban fabric … From its intervention, we can expect a better balance between winter comfort and summer comfort, a saving of materials and carbone emission, a more harmonious insertion in the built environment … It is also an opportunity for a global improvement in use.
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