Thematic area 3:
Architecture, Health, Vulnerabilities (ASV)

Since its creation in 2015, the Architecture, Health, Vulnerability research axis has been one of the leading teams in architectural research focusing on these extremely sensitive topics. This activity relies on networks and collaborations that develop this axis: it mobilizes numerous key figures and partners in the health sector, including: the Assistance Publique-Hôpitaux de Paris (AP-HP); the Assistance Publique-Hôpitaux de Marseille (AP-HM); the Université Paris Cité, particularly its Faculty of Health, unique in France and a leader in Europe; the University Hospital of Reims; the University Hospital-Hôtel Dieu of Nantes; the France-United States Memorial Hospital Center in Saint-Lô; and the Nanterre Hospital Care and Reception Center.
The members of this axis, established researchers or doctoral students, are also architects, engineers, designers, doctors, hospital directors, historians, landscape architects, urban planners, sociologists, anthropologists.

This research area develops partnerships through the deployment of funded research programs and support for doctoral and postdoctoral research. Furthermore, the area works in synergy with the "Architecture, Design, Health" partnership chair, ARCHIDESSA, which is accredited, subsidized, and funded (2020) by the Ministry of Culture, and co-founded by the AP-HP, the AP-HP Foundation, the ENSA PVS, the EVCAU Laboratory, and the École Camondo.

The thematic area “Architecture, Health, Vulnerabilities” develops research on multi-scalar architectural design processes and their transformations over time, exploring the multiple relationships between urban planning, landscape, architecture, design, the environment, and their therapeutic qualities. It aims to provide an overview of architectural theories and practices, encouraging the development of methods applied to issues of health, medical humanities, hospitality, and vulnerability. Thus, the area generates new knowledge and projects related to environmental care, embracing the polysemous and inclusive nature of this concept. It involves considering how to reduce individual and collective vulnerabilities in inhabited spaces, but also recognizing that architecture and built or natural spaces can themselves be more or less fragile and threatened. Today, with the new crises, urban planning, landscape, architecture and design must once again, each on their own scale, re-examine their reciprocal relationships, their interactions and interdependencies, with health.