EVCAU Research Unit
ENSA Paris-Val de Seine

Scientific Project
Voted on July 2, 2024
 
 
Since 1995, Evcau (EnVironnements numériques, Cultures Architecturales et Urbaines) has been questioning architectural, urban, and landscape design approaches and their transformations. At the convergence of ecological, societal, and health issues, and in light of the current crisis, the research unit is committed to an approach to “design” issues—in the broadest sense of the term—in all their complexity, combining disciplinary and temporal approaches in their multi-scale and multi-factorial dimensions.

The Evcau's scientific project covers a broad field of architectural research, structured around scientific themes such as: “Architecture and Digital Technology”; “Systemic Design and Projective Ecologies”; “Transitions: History, Ecologies, and Materiality of Architectures”; and “Architecture, Health, and Vulnerabilities.”

Beyond this diverse landscape of the laboratory, there are “areas of convergence” or “problem fields” that are common to all and in which our community of researchers is able to embody itself as a whole.
Below, we highlight three of these “areas,” taking into account the general context in which we operate, the nature and forms of design practices, and scientific activity as we understand it in the specific world of architectural research.
By forming interfaces between the laboratory's areas of focus, these “areas” encourage cross-disciplinary collaboration, bringing our strengths together to tackle the complexity of contemporary issues and overcome current scientific obstacles.

I - Areas of convergence in the scientific project

A _ Ecumene and environments in the Anthropocene era
Evcau is convinced that the crisis of the naturalistic model of the world is part of a shared quest for lucidity about the Anthropocene era in which we are engaged, conscious of the deployment of temporalities and the inter/trans/pluri-disciplinarity in which we are involved.

In the environments—or ecumens—in which cities and architecture are projects, where humans (and non-humans) coexist, Evcau researchers work to recognize the ethical issues associated with taking into account the “material” that already exists, the care given to people, and the question of waste as a resource. This refers to a policy of vulnerability, but is also a guarantee of alternative practices of innovation, in the form of various works dealing with today's ecological, climatic, and material issues.

Our research approach covers a broad temporal and spatial spectrum. It invites us to make a diagnosis of the current state of affairs. Such a method does not preclude either examining history to better understand the present or envisaging the future by scenario-building possibilities (virtual and/or augmented realities; digital humanities [and more than humanities]).
 

B _ The ecologies of design

The Evcau scientific community identifies with the theory, cultures, and activities of design that form the basis of architectural, urban, and landscape training and practices. These activities are particularly affected by contemporary transformations: climate change, resource constraints, environmental changes, digital, social, and political transitions, as well as their impacts on the world's habitability.

We start from the premise that we can no longer design or think about design activity “as before.” For us, it is a question of defending “an ecology of design,” that is, a system of interactions between actors, objects, and an environment that constitute ecology. This holistic and ecosystemic system takes into account the complexity of environments.
This ecology of design leads EVCAU researchers to focus on, among other things, bioclimatic design, digital eco-twins, bio-digital technology, energy, and life cycle analysis. We are therefore investigating engineering tools that enable architects to combine knowledge from different disciplines (parametric development, database exploitation, visualization and analysis tools, artificial intelligence, mapping, etc.).

EVCAU researchers are also interested in therapeutic environments, promoting a general ecosystem of living, the habitability of environments through architecture, and health in particular.
Finally, we are interested in existing resources, from materials to territory, including the built environment, in order to examine the process of design, construction, and transformation.

C _ Epistemologies and methodologies of architectural research

EVCAU researchers share a common interest in questioning what research activity in an architecture school and/or architectural research can be.

What matters to us is to think about architectural research together, using an appropriate epistemological framework and methodological tools.
Within the framework of this architectural research, some Evcau researchers are particularly interested in architectural science, undertaking work that questions both the theory of knowledge and its multiple applications.
The intersection of design and research practices varies, depending on whether they circulate between the retroactive and proactive aims of the project and the retrospective and prospective aims of science. They are translated into research in/on/by/with architecture. The variety of these approaches, their hybridizations, and their capacity to generate collaborations are of particular interest to Evcau.

The plural methodologies derived from the various methodological fields involved aim to bring together different perspectives and approaches. Thus, the implementation of design and decision-making tools is combined with archival and monographic research, which in turn complements modeling work that combines building surveys with other forms of field research. At the same time, full-scale construction experiments link project manipulation with conceptualization activities.

The EVCAU scientific project aims to combine skills, compare protocols, and increase the number of interfaces between the various disciplines and actors who come together to collaborate within our diverse community, which, in its eclecticism, can be viewed as an ecosystem analogous to the entire architectural research community.


II – Thematic areas

The “areas of convergence” or “problem areas” shared by the entire EVCAU community are accompanied by a positioning of each of the unit's four thematic areas. Here is the content of EVCAU's four thematic areas:

Thematic area 1: Architecture and Digital Technology (AN)

Architecture and Digital Technology is the historical focus of the Evcau laboratory, which, since its creation, has been investing in architectural design methods and models in the era of digital processes and data-driven generative models.

At all scales, from the body to the home to the city, data is the basis for interpretations and models of human organizations that enrich experimental and theoretical investigation methodologies. The use of data raises fundamental questions of ethics, politics, and creativity, which the theme critically examines in the field of architectural research.

Researchers in this area are also experimenting with tools and methods derived from new models of living organization, as well as artificial analytical and generative modes cultivated by data science and the field of artificial intelligence. This work makes it possible to envisage new “models” of design, rather than a project model: analysis models, simulation models, and generation models.
These developments give rise to various factors of transformation, including the acquisition and modeling of information, data management and sharing, the combination of data, calculations, and simulations, as well as exchanges and collaboration between actors.
These different approaches create a problematized context that is part of an epistemological continuity that resonates with the issues addressed by the other areas of focus of the EVCAU laboratory. This research therefore draws on multiple disciplinary fields and shared or complementary methodologies combining fundamental quantitative and qualitative approaches to the study of the design and perception of generated spaces. It encompasses applied research aimed at enriching professional practices, as well as research that feeds into theoretical knowledge related to project approaches or inventive processes.
Researchers in this area have initiated several partnership agreements with educational and research institutions in their immediate environment, as well as at the regional, national, and international levels. It is in this context that the research area has been able to develop its research, particularly within the framework of the ARCHITECTURE & INTELLIGENCES partnership chair dedicated to research and the promotion of architectural and urban design models.


Thematic area 2: Transitions: History and Ecologies of Architectural Models (THEMA)

Researchers working on this theme are convinced that transforming existing structures is a major lever for ecological transition in this era of anthropocentric lucidity. They therefore make this the main focus of their research, accompanying it with an understanding of the transition between theory and practice, between discourse, narrative, and reality.

The existing is perceived as a resource, studied from the material to the larger territory, in France and internationally. It is analyzed through the prism of design processes (thoughts, tools, actors, deliverables), constructions (program, ecology, economy, project, construction site, energy), and transformations (models and transmissions, doctrines, palimpsests, reconstructions, reversibilities, reuses, bio- and geo-sourced).

We also seek to identify different models and the controversies that accompany them, raising the question of the impact of ecological transition on architecture, cities, and territories, as well as on history, teaching, and research.
This theme brings together researchers from different disciplinary fields (historians, architects, sociologists, urban planners, engineers, etc.) who use different tools and methods specific to the knowledge of the existing (archival and oral sources, manual and digital surveys/(re)drawings, field surveys, diagnostics, etc.).

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

Since its creation in 2015, the Architecture, Health, Vulnerability area has been one of the main architectural research teams working on these extremely sensitive issues. This activity is supported by networks and collaborations that promote this theme: it mobilizes numerous resource persons and partners in the health sector, including: Assistance Publique-Hôpitaux de Paris (AP-HP); Assistance Publique-Hôpitaux de Marseille AP-HM; Université Paris Cité, notably its Faculty of Health, which is unique in France and a leader in Europe; Reims University Hospital; Nantes University Hospital-Hôtel Dieu; the France-United States Memorial Hospital in Saint-Lô; and the Nanterre Hospital Care Center.
The members of this research area, who are either established researchers or doctoral students, include architects, engineers, designers, doctors, hospital directors, historians, landscape architects, urban planners, sociologists, and anthropologists.
This research area develops partnerships through the deployment of funded research programs and support for doctoral and postdoctoral research. In addition, the research area works in synergy with the ARCHIDESSA partnership chair in “Architecture, Design, Health,” which is certified, approved, and funded (2020) by the Ministry of Culture and co-founded by the AP-HP, the AP-HP Foundation, ENSA PVS, the EVCAU Laboratory, and the École Camondo.

The “Architecture, Health, Vulnerabilities” research area develops research on multiscale architectural design processes and their transformations over time by examining 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 by encouraging the development of methods applied to the issues of health, medical humanities, hospitality, and vulnerabilities. Thus, the research area produces new knowledge and projects related to caring for environments, embracing the polysemic and inclusive nature of this concept. It involves thinking about reducing individual or collective vulnerabilities in inhabited spaces, but also considering and taking into account that architecture and built or natural spaces can themselves be more or less fragile and threatened. Today, with new crises emerging, urban planning, landscape architecture, architecture, and design must once again, each at their own level, reexamine their reciprocal relationships, interactions, and interdependencies with health.
 
 
Thematic Area 4: Projective Therapeutic Ecology of Human Ecumens and Systemic Design (EPSD)

Research in the “Projective Ecologies & Systemic Design” area focuses on the genetics of the forms and organizations of inhabited territories, whether large territories, urban agglomerations, or buildings, and their care. The morphogenetic approach aims to explain the appearance, disappearance, or transformation of human ecumens and the underlying anthropological, political, and economic dynamics. The architectural/architectonic phenomenon is therefore considered to be an artefactual eco-systemic phenomenon whose genesis processes are in every way similar to those of nature, i.e., an emergence (formation) produced by the interaction of a system of interrelated and interdependent factors (Darwinian evolution). Our approach thus attempts to update the anthropological relationship between nature and culture in the hope of reviving Vitruvian's conception of architecture as an encyclopedic whole. To do this, it posits as a primary scientific imperative the constitution of a theoretical object distinct from observable phenomena, allowing them to be grasped in their diversity as well as their similarity.

The purpose of the research undertaken in this area is to forge objects of knowledge that can be used on four levels:
1° Describe and explain the various phenomena of land development and planning and their complexity.
2. Propose new projective systemic tools offering the possibility of initiating other ways of conceiving architectural and territorial projects, involving all their components, methods of evaluation, and governance.
3. Describe the dysfunctions and laws of cognitive and physical interactions between humans, ecumens, and environments.
4° Implement specific therapeutic strategies adapted to each human-non-human environment/ecumene.


III – Research activities

The research activities carried out by the Evcau research unit aim to remove the scientific barriers to linking thematic areas, areas of convergence, and specific research projects. These research projects are co-developed by Evcau members based on their specific areas of expertise.
Evcau's research activities (current and future) therefore lie at the intersection between areas of invariance and thematic areas.