Titles
A-C
80/20: transdisciplinary design as a means of overcoming res...A Paradigm of Ecological Architecture in Vulnerable Contexts...A Protest Garden: Contested space in an urban park in Seattl...A Question of Character: Instruments for Longevity in Repurp...A Story of a Place, Utilizing Indigenous Building Practices ...Adaptive Resilience at the Architectural Scale. Two Compleme...Adaptive Reuse Scenarios In Industrial Heritage Site: An Inv...An Assessment of Universal Accessibility in Institutions of ...Antagonistic Discourses of the Self-Build Urbanization withi...Architecture and Place: Context Specific Approach to Housing...Architecture of SubtractionAuthentic Edinburgh: Discursive Battles in Tourism ContextAutonomous Dialectics: Mapping Desire and Conflict in the Su...Bamboo: The Past Comes to the FutureBeyond Borders: Addressing Global Urbanization ChallengesBeyond the steel recycling paradigm: a value-network explora...Bio-Based Composites for Regenerative Architecture: Terrene,...Birmingham, Alabama USA and its Struggle to Embrace History ...Bottom-up Participatory Practices for Diversity and Resilien...CENEU Park: a public space for ecological restorationChallenges in Participatory Design Research: Review of Empir...Circularity of Traditional Architecture in Kathkuni Building...Cities Facing the Future: Towards the City we Want. Barcelon...Citizen Controlled Urbanism? Dweller Control and Anarchist U...City Making and the Conflict over Bike LanesClimate Refuge/e: Migrant Histories and Present Environmenta...CoaAst: Engaging Communities in Coastal Kenya through Aural ...Community Design and Self-sufficiency for the Provision of T...Concrete heritage in Grenoble: how to remake the city throug...Contemporary FreejContested Histories: The Civil War, the Civil Rights Movemen...(IN)>Tangible Lab: Embodied ICH and Community Engagement in ...
D-G
Danish by Design: How a Cultural Design Ethos can Shape a Ci...Decoding Urban Stress Mapping Criteria In Urban Heritage Cor...Deconstructing the Unintended Outcomes of Community Developm...Denver as the 'Paris on the Platte': The Fate of a 'City Bea...Designing for Descendant Communities: "Do it for the Culture...Designing for Intersectionality: Eco-Feminism, Environmental...Development and marginality in Sant’Erasmo, Palermo. An an...Development of a New Biodegradable Brick Made from Straw and...Dialectic between Natural and Industrial Sites in Post-Extra...Displacement-Immune: A Nontraditional Approach to Site Resea...Empowering vulnerable citizens through service-learning in t...Enabling Component Re-Use in Digital WorkflowsEngaging Student Voices: A Five Year study of the Higher Edu...Erasure of Urban Detritus: The Eradication of Toronto’s Si...Evaluating Factors That Impact the Robustness of Historic Ur...Evolving Urban Landscapes: The Impact of Immigration on Sout...Exploring Indigenous Knowledge in Toronto, CanadaExploring localized production of biomaterials for extreme e...Firgrove Forever: Supporting Legacy Narratives of a Communit...Fluid Boundaries: A Cultural Exploration of Water in Chicago...FoundersKeepers - material circularity within educational fr...Framework For Formulating Geospatial Conflict Analysis Metri...From Waste to Resource: Exploring Ecological Urbanism Throug...Future of the City Centre in Four ContinentsGraded Durability in Earthen Construction: A Sample-informed...
Presenters
Schedule

IN-PERSON Barcelona. Section A

Urban Futures-Cultural Pasts
Concrete heritage in Grenoble: how to remake the city through the recycling of its construction materials
C. Di Marco & M. Higgin
9:30 am - 11:00 am

Abstract

In 1817, Joseph Vicat ‘invented’ modern concrete, using argillaceous limestone local to Grenoble, sowing the seed that would transform the form of the urban fabric and make the identity of the city (Grenoble). This transformation led to the radical re-working of architectural form, the colossal extension of infrastructures that re-shaped the land and our ways of inhabiting it, but it also fundamentally transformed the ‘constructive cultures’ of European societies (Simmonet 2005). That is, concrete disrupted traditional relations between architects, trades and their clients, it brought standardisation and norms, and it altered the very metabolism of the city. Concrete is not eternal, it ages, it weakens. Today we face the challenge of making concrete city sustainable, and often the solution is to demolish but unlike others building materials, concrete has difficulty being re-used as anything more than rubble. As teachers of the next generation of urbanists and architects, our question is how do we get our students to think beyond this ‘concrete order’. Our concern, here, is less those of the sand swallowed and the carbon emitted by its production than that of concrete’s afterlives (Higgin 2016). In collaboration with the artist Stefan Shankland we developed a workshop experimenting with techniques re-working this inheritance, finding new urban forms from the waste of the old.

Biography

Cecilia Di Marco is an architect with a Ph.D. in planning and urban design, specializing in the urban recycling of contemporary cities through the analysis of waste landscapes. Currently serving as an assistant professor at the Institute of Urban Planning and Alpine Geography and conducting research at PACTE, her work focuses on exploring the relationship between the built environment and human health.

Marc Higgin is a lecturer at the Institut of Urbanism and Alpine Geography in Grenoble and researcher at AAU-CRESSON. His research focuses on the everyday practices of social life and the non-human place in the ways humans inhabit the world: our relationships with the environment, with animals, with materiality and its waste.