Théorie et critique du projet BA5 (Malterre-Barthes)

AR-301(ah) / 12 crédits

Enseignant: Malterre-Barthes Charlotte

Langue: Anglais

Withdrawal: It is not allowed to withdraw from this subject after the registration deadline.

Remark: Inscription faite par la section

Summary

"To be useful, helpful, of assistance to someone:" The "In Service of: Berre" studio reflects on the architectural and territorial project as a form of public service. It explores how architecture and design tools can engage in spatial struggles in the context of toxic, petrochemical territories.

Content

Fall 2025 Design Studio


Date/Time: Mondays and Tuesdays
Monday: 10:00-12:00, 13:00-19:00
Tuesday: 10:00 - 12:00, 15:00-19:00

 

Office Hours as requested
Credits: 12
Location: Varies, See Studio Schedule
SG XXXX - Studio Space (tbd)

 

This class is taught in English.

Teaching Team: Charlotte Malterre-Barthes (charlotte.malterrebarthes@epfl.ch), Elif Erez (elif.erez@epfl.ch), Antoine Iweins (antoine.iweinsdeeckhoutte@epfl.ch).
Student Assistants: Lydia Genecand (lydia.genecand@epfl.ch), Eva Outstric (eva.oustric@epfl.ch).

 

This studio is in collaboration with the Bureau des Guides-13.

 

Teaching Format:

 

Depending on enrollment, students will work in groups of two/three. Each desk discussion will require the attendance of at least 2 student groups for peer-to-peer feedback. Desk discussions will happen on a weekly or bi-weekly basis. All group attendance is required for episode reviews, readings, guest lectures, and mid-term and final reviews.

 

Estimated Costs:

 

Site trip to Berre (27.09-30.09 tbc) : 450-550€ (420-510chf)

Train travel - 150-250€ / Accomodation for 3 nights - 150€ / Food for 4 days - 100-150€
Prints: All material can be printed on A3 printers, B/W. Plotter prints are optional
Model Materials: We encourage working with discarded/reuse material.

 

Course Description:

 

Nota Bene: This studio is part of the 'In Service of:...' fall series that seeks to redress uneven access to design and planning literacy for the majority (Previous studios: 'In Service of: Marseille'--architectural, 'In Service of: le Mirail'--urban, and this one, terrorial). The studio series places design as a tool at the service of a place, a population, a territory, a narrative, for the benefit of the common good.

 

In Service of: Berre

 

"When crude oil enters our bodies in the form of toxins, it transforms our senses, creating a radically shifted orientation toward the world." Mameni, Salar. Terracene: A Crude Aesthetics. Durham: Duke University Press Durham, 2023.

 

The Etang de Berre (hereafter "Berre," the "Pond") is a 155 km brackish water bodya mix of sweet and salt water--surrounded by petrochemical industry. The area of the largest saltwater lake in Europe is heavily polluted--as the water, air, soil, and bodies. Located northwest of Marseille, the Etang de Berre is, since 1863, connected to the Mediterranean Sea by the Caronte canal, and since 1925, to the Port Autonome de Marseille via the Rove river tunnel.

 

In 1928, the oil company, Shell, installed a refinery in the village of Berre-l'etang, followed by two others in Lavera and La Mede. Post-1945, more chemical and petrochemical plants were established. An EDF hydroelectric power station was built in Saint-Chamas in 1966, using water from the Durance River through the Canal de Provence, and rejecting hot water since. Since 1922, Marignane has been an aviation center, now home to Marseille's airport and many aircraft manufacturing facilities. With the petro-hub of Fos-sur-Mer, established between 1962 and 1968, as the departure point of the South European crude oil pipeline feeding Crissier (Switzerland) and running up to Karlsruhe (Germany), the Etang de Berre/Gulf of Fos forms an indirect territory of extraction, of production, of processing, and consumption--in particular, of crude oil.

 

Distanced from extractive sites, the Berre area completes the picture of an aggregated 'Terracene' territory. The term "Terracene," articulated by Salar Mameni, narrows down the scientific notion of the Anthropocene to focus specifically on environmental destruction. This is particularly apt as developments around the Etang de Berre/Fos involve all sorts of discharges (chemical and hydrocarbon, energy-based, and domestic waste from the Marseille metropolitan area), resulting in multi-faceted, multi-temporal pollution.

 

Pollution is one of the expected consequences of material extraction, and oil pollution is just one of many issues related to technology, energy and modernity. In the French context, environmental burdens are marked by environmental classism and lesser so, by environmental racism--working-class and migrant communities on peripheral territories bear disproportionate toxic loads from energy infrastructure that powers urban centers and national industrial production. The communities surrounding the pond of Berre experience the environmental costs of France's and Europe's energy modernization--but there is resistance.

 


What does it mean to be in service of a toxic territory?

 

Rather than approaching the Etang de Berre as a site requiring a hypothetic "remediation," we investigate how design practices might work with the active toxicity of the territory and its derivatives' material intelligence while centering the voices and needs of affected communities--humans and more-than-humans. We will build on previous works, notably by Bureau des Guides-13.

 

Architecture is one scale of toxicity--from homes constructed on polluted lands, housing proximity to industrial emissions, and domestic spaces becoming sites of bodily contamination. Crucially, architecture is not merely a victim of toxicity but an active participant in toxic production. The making of architecture is fundamentally reliant on oil, from concrete additives and steel production to plastic components, insulation materials, paints, sealants, and transportation of materials. The petrochemical industry produces the very substances that constitute contemporary building: synthetic polymers, adhesives, waterproofing membranes, and composite materials to name a few. Thus every architectural project participates in oil's supply chains and contributes to these toxic landscapes of extraction and processing.

 

This studio challenges conventional approaches to design by engaging with Mameni's concept of petrorefusal as a way to think about pollution as another form of matter. We examine how pollution--petrochemical substances and others--transforms landscapes, bodies, and communities, while acknowledging the agency of both human and more-than-human actors in these territories. As a design studio, we approach contaminated territories as complex material conditions that require and foster different design methodologies--how do we design architectural and spatial strategies and tactics with and through toxicity?

 

Following Mameni's critique, we challenge the Anthropocene's "crude scientific generalization that cannot imagine--and more importantly refuses to see--other ways of being human." (1) The Etang de Berre exemplifies how environmental destruction is not a new epoch but an ongoing reality for territories bearing the ecological costs of industrial modernity. Homes, schools, and workplaces near the petrochemical and industrial facilities experience elevated levels of toxic exposure through water, air, soil, food, building materials, and chemical intrusion.

 

Site & Trip

 

The Etang de Berre is selected as the setting for this "In Service of: ..." studio because of its position as a paradigmatic toxic territory where environmental classism, industrial heritage, and community resistance intersect. This landscape embodies the contradictions of France's energy modernization--providing the materials for urban prosperity while concentrating environmental burdens in peripheral working-class communities.

 

A 4-day excursion will take us on-site to the Etang de Berre region. NB: This trip will involve significant hiking and walking. If you have specific requirements, accessibility needs, or health concerns, please contact us in advance so we can do our best to accommodate you.

 

Scales

 

This studio is based on a conception of urban design as a multidimensional trans-scalar discipline. Political, economic, social, cultural, and geo-tectonic forces affect and shape the built environment at the global scale, at the territorial and landscape scale, at the neighborhood and urban scale, down to the architectural and material scaleand to the body. Space and its arrangements have a reciprocating effect on these forces, humans, and non-humans acting upon them. We will design within these gradations, positing that each constituent scale is distinct and can be considered on its own, yet the piece as a whole is only complete with each scale, resulting in the sum of all the small scales producing a large-scale total.


In toxic territories, these scales become particularly crucial: molecular contamination scales up to bodily exposure, soil infiltration, neighborhood pollution patterns, territorial supply chains, and global extraction networks. We will also think around temporal scales to challenge "impatient capital" as it dictates architectural, urban, and landscape projects for immediacy, exploring seemingly contradictory notions of ephemeral and impermanent, durable, and longevity as frameworks for operation--particularly relevant when considering the deep time of toxic persistence and the urgency of environmental health.

 

End Notes


  1. Salar Mameni, Terracene: A Crude Aesthetics (Durham: Duke University Press, 2023).

 

Keywords

Territory, Urbanism, Architecture, Labor, Political Economy, Public Service, Étang de Berre

Learning Outcomes

By the end of the course, the student must be able to:

  • Critique a specific project brief and a specific context and respond with a meaningful data-driven design concept.
  • Translate a data-driven design concept into meaningful architectural and/or urban propositions at appropriate scales and levels of granularity.
  • Produce coherent architectural representations and models at sufficient levels of detail.
  • Formulate the morphogenetic narrative and create convincing arguments for the design propositions.
  • Develop convincing final diagrams, drawings, renderings, simulations, physical and digital models.

Teaching methods

Structure/Method:

 

Note: The structure and method of this studio follows prior RIOT-led design studios. As such, we do not recommend students to take studio with us more than once.

 

Through a comprehensive exploration of the forces (i.e., social, legal, political, economic, cultural, environmental) that generate, use, and control space to first expose how, why, and by whom the built and unbuilt environment is shaped, done and undone, we seek to gain a deeper understanding of what affects and is affected by communities at large. The studio is structured around episodes that take us from research, to exploration, to design. In parallel, the studio also conducts a self-critical reflection on its format to question architecture attachment to solutionism, the expectation to 'fix problems,' and other tropes that have led to socially and spatially unjust situations. It also acknowledges the limitations of seeking engagements with communities within the given format of the studio. By focusing on the idea of being helpful without idealizing the task, this design studio hopes to articulate an agenda for a self-critical architecture and territorial practice with a heightened sense of responsibility and a commitment to creating spaces that truly serve the needs of the people.

 

Expected student activities

Goals/ Learning Outcomes

 

The studio's goal is to articulate questions about design's role in inventing futures liberated from the debilitating inert structures we find ourselves entrenched in, facing social and climate crises, to start articulating an understanding of design practices that are truly at the service of others. We will deploy designers' skills and organizational abilities to propose emancipated urban design and architecture projects. We shall develop abilities to think critically about the status quo while developing ways of engaging with the built and the unbuilt environment, pushing forward forms of spatial practice. For that, we will develop literacy in policy, economy, technology, intersectional activism, care, preservation, etc., borrowing from other disciplines and learning to doubt while staying hopeful as we help planning disciplines to pivot toward becoming better practices of stewardship. We will design 'In Service of' Berre.

 

Assessment methods

Assessment methods

 

The grading will be based on the consistent engagement and learning/unlearning curve of the students with each episode in the Studio. The grades will be proportionately distributed over the episodes listed as follows. The studio relies on a self-assessment questionnaire to help the grading.

 

  • Episode 01: 10%
  • Episode 02: 20 %
  • Episode 03: Phase 01 > 20 %
  • Episode 03: Phase 02 > 50 %

Supervision

Office hours Yes
Assistants Yes

Resources

Virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI)

No

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Ressources en bibliothèque

Dans les plans d'études

  • Semestre: Automne
  • Forme de l'examen: Pendant le semestre (session d'hiver)
  • Matière examinée: Théorie et critique du projet BA5 (Malterre-Barthes)
  • Cours: 2 Heure(s) hebdo x 14 semaines
  • Projet: 4 Heure(s) hebdo x 14 semaines
  • Type: obligatoire
  • Semestre: Automne
  • Forme de l'examen: Pendant le semestre (session d'hiver)
  • Matière examinée: Théorie et critique du projet BA5 (Malterre-Barthes)
  • Cours: 2 Heure(s) hebdo x 14 semaines
  • Projet: 4 Heure(s) hebdo x 14 semaines
  • Type: obligatoire
  • Semestre: Automne
  • Forme de l'examen: Pendant le semestre (session d'hiver)
  • Matière examinée: Théorie et critique du projet BA5 (Malterre-Barthes)
  • Cours: 2 Heure(s) hebdo x 14 semaines
  • Projet: 4 Heure(s) hebdo x 14 semaines
  • Type: optionnel
  • Semestre: Automne
  • Forme de l'examen: Pendant le semestre (session d'hiver)
  • Matière examinée: Théorie et critique du projet BA5 (Malterre-Barthes)
  • Cours: 2 Heure(s) hebdo x 14 semaines
  • Projet: 4 Heure(s) hebdo x 14 semaines
  • Type: obligatoire

Semaine de référence

Lundi, 8h - 12h: Projet, labo, autre

Lundi, 13h - 18h: Projet, labo, autre

Mardi, 8h - 10h: Cours

Mardi, 10h - 12h: Projet, labo, autre

Mardi, 15h - 18h: Projet, labo, autre

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Résultats de graphsearch.epfl.ch.