Should we talk about degradation, collapse or simply evolution of the role of the architect in the creation of the city? How the Majors Became ” city operators »? First part in three tables.
Times are uncertain. Here the construction manager has good days, there he is caught in the storm, elsewhere he treads in the desert. Seen from an airplane, its role, its status, its prerogatives have been fading for half a century. Through the slowdown in public procurement and the rise of private promoters, its position, crumbling, evolved from that of a manager to that of a service provider within multidisciplinary teams formed by donors. The wheel turns, the actors evolve, positions hybridize. From a wide variety of situations that could not be listed, a few stand out.
First painting – On the stage three musketeers: local authorities, promoters turned planners and urban planners/architects. To which is added, as with Alexandre Dumas, the irruption of a fourth protagonist in d’Artagnan, or rather as an ugly duckling, more or less appreciated according to his investment potential, listened to or despised, but ultimately essential: the resident and their expectations.
Between the first three actors, the turbulent relations go from worst to best. From the turn of the 2000s, the city’s manufacturing industry faced increasing challenges. Diffused but real and growing pressures, of which the ecological crisis has become in two decades the catalyst, the paragon and the spearhead, justified or not, of a deep reversal in the concerns related to the constituents of the urban and architecture.
The multiplication of items – respect for the planet and the environment, scarcity of resources, energy production, performance of buildings, recycling, circular economy, development of lifestyles – is gradually pushing towards a global approach in which promoters see a strong development potential for their activities. . Goal: to become irreplaceable actors with local authorities, in development, especially new neighborhoods – quickly called eco-neighborhoods – by controlling, through the parent company and subsidiaries, all the parameters of their implementation, servicing, reprocessing, construction, manufacturing, management. , from large to small scale.
Since the 2010s, the majors have equipped themselves with armed arms that, from land to considering the new uses of residents through programs and implementation, offer their services and impose themselves in ” city operators », a high-sounding term that presupposes them to be effective.
To the detriment or benefit of local authorities? That depends. For those who are modest or who are no longer or are not ready to support and manage the complex operations related to development, it is a gift. Which can be hard and dry. entrusting the destiny of their urban development to ” professionals » of real estate, they free themselves from a burden that is heavier and more difficult every year but hand over hands and feet to the private sector, abandon their sovereign prerogatives and limit their freedom of action.
Without listing the possibilities to make their voice heard, they still need to have one. Which does not necessarily depend on their size but on the commitment of the politician. Faced with the power of the Majors, cities and communities are better armed, but this is not a rule. The most effective thing for them would be to control their country – the heart of the matter again and again – and know what they want to do with it.
Every important urban development should be the subject, beyond the PLU, of deep reflection, upstream, by elected officials, landlords and their services assisted by architectural urban planners duly selected by competition to work with them on defining programs, goals, requirements, specifications , sets, etc. (and in the case of a promoter’s diffusion charter).
This file linked, the choice of operator should follow, and not vice versa, a partner even if he is the project owner, of the urban planner and/or the coordinating architect reinforced by the elected officials to apply what they have defined. and wait This leads to a drastic selection of men of art, able to understand its rules, develop and apply its spirit. But also and again culture, clairvoyance and combativeness of the advisers, which are often lacking. The ideal? The chronologically respected collaboration of these three actors. Everyone, after they have planned to impose their views, ends up recognizing and emphasizing it. It alone allows mutual enrichment and the best results. An unusual situation.
Second painting – The same actors but in a different order. The Majors in the first line, supported by their investors, who are as discreet as they are essential, initiate and respond to development operations with the multidisciplinary teams they constitute, in which the architects are service providers, chosen after competitive dialogues to work within workshops, a practice widely developed over the last twenty years.
The reputation of the project managers counts as the size of their agency, for the reputation of the operation on the one hand, and for their ability to be listened to on the other. Few French agencies achieve a critical mass, reputation or authority that enables them to affirm their choices and convince of their importance in the face of the power, the know-how of programmers, their tactics, their economic and financial logic based on optimality. profitability Architects are in a delicate situation as soon as their base does not allow them to speak equally with the companies and the project manager, who moreover can remove them if he deems it necessary. So what future for the architect today and tomorrow? And dark and sparkles.
Third table – To caricature, the Majors, wanting to run their tools at full speed, to rule and control all things in the creation of the city, opened Pandora’s box. By multiplying the service offerings, they kept complexity under control even though they announced themselves as the only ones capable of managing it, offering an all-in-one solution.
What may have appeared for a while, or still appears, as announcement effects, actual control of the elements of the language, of the dialectic or of the commitments, which are too often poorly or not kept, ended up creating expectations that must now be to honor
The professional promoters of the profitable economy inventing ” city operators “, on the way without needing to be prepared for it – there is no school in these matters – without deep reflection on the invention of the city, had to give substance to this all, to make this new function something other than an empty shell. , and gathering and feeding the machine Wherever it is taken, the process, as announced above, is supported and based on realities but also slogans, it depends, more or less in relation to the planet in ecological crisis.
Under the pretext of efficiency, flexibility, sobriety, thrift, performance, durability, it was necessary to take action to sell, attract, seduce and retain investors, buyers but also future residents, the d’Artagnan of old.
Instrumentalized or not, he expects or dreams of a city in a different way, better, full of services and advantages, reconciled with nature above all, which, the further away he gets, the more he asks for more. The fold is taken. Zac and new neighborhoods are without ” nature » orphans Gone is the role of a vessel of pleasure, a place in the city to that of a spine. That we will have to take care of, maintain, manage, finance in the long term. Reversal of perspectives and values. If nature becomes the backbone of the urban fabric, the buildings that depend on it must be designed in symbiosis with it. Is it reality? More like wishful thinking.