Photo from Construire Autrement. Actes Sud, 2006.
This is not the first time that I write an article about the remarkable creative process that Patrick Bouchain and his office Construire have been undertaking for many years now. I even fear not to write anything different from the last post about an interview he gave to Micropolitiques (see previous article). However, I think that it is useful to re-insist on the importance that the construction process he has developed and systematized through the numerous architectural projects he designed. This process is simple and easily applicable if there is a sincere will from the architects and the traditional actors of the construction to work out a democratic way to build.
His book, Construire Autrement (see this old article in 2008 about it!) which can be translate by ‘Building Differently’, constitutes a manifesto as much by its contents as by its form. The latter, indeed, illustrates a literary style empty of complex terminology or initiated knowledge, and is divided into two parts: his writings and those of some his well-known friends, Michel Onfray (philosopher), Gilles Clement (landscape designer), Lucien Kroll (architect), Daniel Buren (artist), Antoine Nochy (philosopher), Romain Paris (urban designer) and Otar Iosseliani (film maker).
As far as the content is concerned, P. Bouchain explains through it his will to involve the ensemble of the actors concerned by the building he is designing in its creative and constructive process. In order to do so, he triggers the encounter of those actors by organizing debates on site between neighbors, local politicians and crafts(wo)men, he sets up a canteen during the construction so that local people can have meals with workers, he invites elementary schools to visit the site and educates kids (and grown-up) about the implications a building and its construction can have on the city etc. He also proposes a political strategy to implement, through each public building’s creative and constructive process, an innovative and democratic approach. Since 1936 (and systematically since 1981), French public buildings have to dedicate 1% of their construction budget to a work of art. As the latter, thanks to its status, can be created in a relative freedom, P. Bouchain envisions (and applies to his own buildings) policies that would add to this one, a “solidarity 1%” which promotes the social aspect of the construction (like for the canteen), as well as a “scientific 1%” which develops a useful research for the building, an “education 1%” to trigger programs like the one mentioned above and an “elderly 1%” which insists on the importance of the transmission of knowledge between generations.
