Un manifeste pour un moratoire sur les nouvelles constructions, pour envisager un avenir moins extractif, fait de ce que nous avons : ne pas démolir, ne pas construire du neuf, mais construire moins, construire avec ce qui existe, l'habiter différemment et en prendre soin.
To build is to destroy, writes Charlotte Malterre-Barthes. From steel bolts to concrete blocks to wood flooring to polyester insulation panels, every single component of the built environment is the product of extractive processes. Driven by greedy economies, the global enterprise of space production expands, impacting climate, earth, water, humans, and non-humans everywhere. However housing is both a human right and the mandate of design disciplines: How to navigate the need for housing versus the destructive practice of construction?
To pause new construction—even if momentarily, creates a radical thinking framework for alternatives to the current regime of space production and its suspect growth imperative. Engaging with unsettling questions, A Moratorium on New Construction envisions a massive value shift for our existing stock. From housing redistribution to reinviting value generation, from anti-extractive measures to profound structural changes, from curricula reforms to purging the exploitative culture of the office, an entire rewiring of design processes and construction lays ahead. Somewhere between a thought experiment and a call for action, A Moratorium on New Construction is a leap of faith to envision a less extractive future, made of what we have: Not demolishing, not building new, but building less, building with what exists, inhabiting it differently, and caring for it.
Charlotte Malterre-Barthes (née en 1977 à Marseille) est architecte, urbaniste et professeure de projet architectural et urbain à l'École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) en Suisse. Auparavant professeure à l'université de Harvard (Graduate School of Design), elle mène des recherches sur l'urbanisation contemporaine, l'extraction de matériaux, l'urgence climatique et la justice climatique, spatiale et sociale. Elle a notamment publié Immigration et ségrégation spatiale, L'exemple de Marseille (éditions Parenthèses, 2022) et la bande dessinée Eileen Gray: Une maison sous le soleil (Dargaud, 2020) parmi de nombreux autres livres et articles.
