Lhe building architects of France (ABF) give their opinion on a fifth of all town planning authorisations, particularly in the most preserved sites and territories of our country (such as remarkable heritage sites). We are at the forefront of territorial transformations and see emerging trends.
We have to decide on many situations and deal with these “products” from the suburban fabric that come in the old building: roller shutter, thermal insulation from the outside (ITE), solar panels, carport, above ground swimming pool, to name a few. than them. If we so often find ourselves in the position of “old-fashioned” schoolteacher, even censor, it is because we have to remember important things that society has forgotten, or worse, that it does not want not hear while its long-term durability is at stake.
The observation is shared, the constructive and material quality achieved by the generations that preceded us is all the more admired that they had neither “unlimited” energy, nor sophisticated machines. In the past, it was places that decided, local materials, slopes, soils, climates that made these buildings. These sites and each territory reveal how much previous generations adapted to the climate and took advantage of a place.
The testimony of old stones
Builders built sustainably. Today, we have disproportionate means which enable us to transform, to build very quickly or to add intrusive technical prostheses (heat pump, solar panels, etc.). But instead of improving our habitat, our way of life on the territory, these solutions amplify the disorders at work at the level of heritage, energy, and therefore climate. The ABF profession, which has existed since the post-war period, knows the “old stones”.
However, the latter are not silent, they carry a message and a function, as the architect and urban planner Fernand Pouillon (1912-1986) wrote in his novel The Wild Stones (1964). Swiss heritage architect Christophe Amsler explains ” that as long as the inhabitants have accepted lower temperatures in winter than in summer, greater light during the day than at night, more tranquility in the countryside than in the city, as long, in a word, as man admitted that there were several ways of living, summer, winter, daytime, nighttime, urban and rural, energy problems did not arise (…) . They are beings who speak to beings about ways of being”.
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