In the face of global warming, the Paris metropolitan area must rethink how it creates comfort, provides housing, and ensures safety. With temperatures projected to rise by an estimated 4°C by 2100, seasonal changes in the frequency and intensity of weather events are also expected. Precipitation will increase in winter, accompanied by more violent and frequent storms, while summers will be drier and hotter. How can we envision the climate as a resource? This is the central aim of the three projects in the New Climates exhibition.
In *L’eau brute*, architects Camille Lot, Julie Maillard, and Pauline Soulenq analyze “raw water”—rainwater, groundwater, lakes, rivers, and so on—to reveal it and consider it as a tool for adapting to climate change, at both the regional and architectural scales. For the project titled La Mécanique du Froid, architect Nicolas Dorval-Bory explores the relationship between architecture and mineral mass to diffuse coolness. Finally, the research project Construire l’ombre, led by architects Jasmine Kenniche Le Nouëne and Gaël Le Nouëne, analyzes and develops systems designed to enhance the presence of shade in the city. Through historical images, maps, photographs, and 1:1 scale models, the exhibition Nouveaux Climats examines the role of architecture in the face of a changing climate and questions the climate systems of the city of tomorrow.
Raw Water
The Greater Paris metropolitan area is facing a growing scarcity of water resources, as well as an increase in heat waves and intense, brief, and irregular rainfall, revealing Paris’s inability to be resilient. Raw water is found in the environment; it has not been treated and contains all minerals, ions, particles, bacteria, and parasites. This resource can become a true common good for residents. Conducting research on raw water means considering it as an adaptation tool present in various forms throughout the city and its surrounding area. It is visible on multiple scales: the Seine, rain, rivers, canals, roofs, gutters, gargoyles, drainage channels, manholes, outlets, cornices, reservoirs, basins… The “Raw Water” research project aims, on the one hand, to reveal the ingenuity of existing systems and, on the other hand, to enable users to interact with raw water through trans-scalar, low-tech architectural and landscape solutions. Green, gray, brown, and blue waters represent underutilized potentials to be harnessed, amplified, and shared. This enhancement helps, among other things, to increase biodiversity and urban coolness, conserve drinking water, and imagine new uses.
Research conducted by Camille Lot, Julie Maillard, and Pauline Soulenq, architects
Creating Shade
Based on scientific findings that indicate global warming in our cities, it is essential—as architects and residents of Paris—to explore ways to protect against heat and bring coolness to the city without resorting to technical solutions that consume energy. This involves drawing on the most fundamental elements and determining the role of shade in our daily urban lives. Just like natural light, shade is a universal right and contributes to thermal comfort. Light propagates through the absence of matter; shade exists through the presence of matter. It is the result of light interacting with a plane or a mass. The physical element that enables the very existence of shadow can be horizontal, vertical, or oblique; opaque or openwork; thin or thick. Its shape can be geometric or random. It must be distinct and at a distance from the ground in order to cast a shadow there. It is intimately linked to the presence of trees. Nevertheless, in Paris, due to the presence of infrastructure, plantings do not always allow for a continuous path in the shade. How can the need for shade be introduced into a defined urban, landscape, and architectural setting? What architectural typologies allow for shade? What are the essential characteristics of the systems to be considered?
Research conducted by Jasmine Kenniche Le Nouëne & Gaël Le Nouëne, architects
Raw Water
The Greater Paris metropolitan area is facing a growing scarcity of water resources, as well as an increase in heat waves and intense, brief, and irregular rainfall, revealing Paris’s inability to be resilient. Raw water is found in the environment; it has not been treated and contains all minerals, ions, particles, bacteria, and parasites. This resource can become a true common good for residents. Conducting research on raw water means considering it as an adaptation tool present in various forms throughout the city and its surrounding area. It is visible on multiple scales: the Seine, rain, rivers, canals, roofs, gutters, gargoyles, drainage channels, manholes, outlets, cornices, reservoirs, basins… The “Raw Water” research project aims, on the one hand, to reveal the ingenuity of existing systems and, on the other hand, to enable users to interact with raw water through trans-scalar, low-tech architectural and landscape solutions. Green, gray, brown, and blue waters represent underutilized potentials to be harnessed, amplified, and shared. This enhancement helps, among other things, to increase biodiversity and urban coolness, conserve drinking water, and imagine new uses.
Research conducted by Camille Lot, Julie Maillard, and Pauline Soulenq, architects
The Mechanics of Cooling
Although Paris has been a temperate city since its founding, where the main challenge to comfort has been heating, the capital’s future is nevertheless unfolding within a new geological and climatic era. With the prospect of scorching summers reaching up to 50°C in a few decades, Paris is inevitably moving closer to Seville’s current climate. But the city must evolve so that its residents can continue to live there comfortably, despite an existing architectural structure that is necessarily ill-suited. First, by identifying Parisian climate control systems throughout its history, the study then seeks to understand the physical principles of cooling and the ways in which other cultures have integrated its production, conservation, and distribution into architecture. Finally, drawing on Parisian projects and case studies, the research proposes several architectural and technical strategies to envision a comfortable and frugal climatic future.
Research conducted by Nicolas Dorval-Bory Architects
Although Paris has been a temperate city since its founding, where the main challenge to comfort has been heating, the capital’s future is nevertheless unfolding within a new geological and climatic era. With the prospect of scorching summers reaching up to 50°C in a few decades, Paris is inevitably moving closer to Seville’s current climate. But the city must evolve so that its residents can continue to live there comfortably, despite an existing architectural structure that is necessarily ill-suited. First, by identifying Parisian climate control systems throughout its history, the study then seeks to understand the physical principles of cooling and the ways in which other cultures have integrated its production, conservation, and distribution into architecture. Finally, drawing on Parisian projects and case studies, the research proposes several architectural and technical strategies to envision a comfortable and frugal climatic future.
Research conducted by Nicolas Dorval-Bory Architects
Creating Shade
Based on scientific findings that indicate global warming in our cities, it is essential—as architects and residents of Paris—to explore ways to protect against heat and bring coolness to the city without resorting to technical solutions that consume energy. This involves drawing on the most fundamental elements and determining the role of shade in our daily urban lives. Just like natural light, shade is a universal right and contributes to thermal comfort. Light propagates through the absence of matter; shade exists through the presence of matter. It is the result of light interacting with a plane or a mass. The physical element that enables the very existence of shadow can be horizontal, vertical, or oblique; opaque or openwork; thin or thick. Its shape can be geometric or random. It must be distinct and at a distance from the ground in order to cast a shadow there. It is intimately linked to the presence of trees. Nevertheless, in Paris, due to the presence of infrastructure, plantings do not always allow for a continuous path in the shade. How can the need for shade be introduced into a defined urban, landscape, and architectural setting? What architectural typologies allow for shade? What are the essential characteristics of the systems to be considered?
Research conducted by Jasmine Kenniche Le Nouëne & Gaël Le Nouëne, architects
