Objectives of Programme's Learning Outcomes

• Instruct a question on architecture
• Identify different assumptions with respect to an architectural problem
• Identify and articulate the various components constituting an architectural or urban context
• Transversely coordinate the various disciplines related to architecture
• Master the architecture of contemporary societal issues
• Develop an identified spatial response
• Demonstrate innovation and creativity in constantly evolving situations
• Make choices
• Demonstrate reflexivity, openness and initiative
• Demonstrate ethical values
• Demonstrate independence of thought and action.

Learning Outcomes of UE

Students will be able to problematize their relationship to the territory in architecture and urban planning based on the major theories of political ecology of the 20th and 21st centuries.

- mastery of the theoretical tools necessary for the production of a critical analysis
(identify the political issues related to the fields of 1. sustainable development and ecological transition, 2. degrowth, 3. radical ecology, 4. libertarian ecology)
- awareness of deconstruction practices
(deconstruction of the modern European idea of nature; deconstruction of the major modern European categories of industry, heritage and nature)
- awareness of comparative approaches in the field of philosophical anthropology
(comparison of ways of living, of thinking, of representing territories in modern, non-modern, like peasant societies, and counter-modern, like eco-libertarian societies)
- awareness of critical approaches to representations and the media
(critical analysis of literary, cinematographic or artistic content related to modern European representations of nature)
- mastery of the key concepts of contemporary political ecology, in particular that resulting from libertarian thoughts
(bioregionalism, eco-communalism, libertarian municipalism, political ecology, libertarian ecology, etc.)

UE Content: description and pedagogical relevance

Questionning
Industrial modernity is today designated as the main cause of the ecological crisis. If this will perhaps not put an end to the history of humanity, it will certainly - radically - transform our societies. In this context, more and more voices are calling for a rethinking of our relationship with the environment. For some, it would be a question of preserving nature, that is to say not only the natural resources on which we depend, but also, more broadly, ecosystems and biodiversity. It would be necessary, for others, more radical, to revolutionize our ways of life. But reinventing our relationship to the world is not easy. This is a living environment in the sense that those who live there appropriate it. Modern divisions, as exemplary, the one that opposes the present to the past or the human to nature seem normal or obvious to us: in an old listed village, we contemplate a past that we experience as cut off from modern life; on a mountain trail, we have the impression of being "in the heart of nature", that is to say in a world apart, in every way different from that in which humans live. The familiarity of the modern world does not mean that this world does not pose problems, but that those which we pose are perhaps, in their turn, too obvious, that is to say too dependent on these divisions that we do not don't ask. On closer examination, the car park in which you park your car outside the listed village contributes to making it exist as a heritage complex in every way distinct from the modern world; the observation hut from which, well hidden, one observes the life of the birds, makes the marsh appear as a nature separated from the human world. From this perspective, it is not certain that modern categories are still relevant in order to be able, in this world, to think about and identify desirable futures, except to consider too quickly, for example, that a smart city attached to a nature reserve and an old heritage village constitutes a transformation of our way of life.
In other words, we must take the time to detune ourselves from this too familiar world. To do this, we reflect on very concrete situations. It is obviously not a question of affirming that the ideas do not have their place in this book, but one would perhaps go a little too quickly by considering, too simply, that it is enough to mobilize the texts of Jean-Jacques Rousseau or Alexander von Humboldt to succeed in getting rid of a Cartesianism which justified, on its own, the exploitation of nature. The representations through which we perceive the world were not invented by a philosopher and then installed once and for all in our heads, but they never cease to take shape in our living environment, through our most daily experiences. . To better convey what makes the specificity of the divisions of the modern world, we have decided to recount them and to question them based on the transformations they have imposed on another world: the peasantry, that is to say say that of autonomous, self-subsisting communities maintaining with their territory a relationship of co-construction unthinkable at the start of modern categories, in particular that of heritage and nature. Returning to the creation of folklore and regionalisms, then to the promotion of local know-how with the Protected Designations of Origin and heritage complexes, but also to the first measures to protect natural spaces, to the opposing territorial conflicts hunters, ecologists and political leaders in the context of setting a mountain area as a nature reserve or even on the restoration of a calaminous lawn near a former industrial zone, we show how modernity has endowed with a history, very largely fantastical, at the same time as it invented nature.
We are thus making the following bet: accepting the artificiality of the divisions allows us to identify other ways of composing worlds, richer in life, but also freer. Thinking without nature, to use part of the title of this book, therefore does not mean that we should no longer worry about it, but rather than relating to it by asking ourselves how we could preserve a piece of history. or of a nature that would have escaped the pangs of modernity, we can experiment with other ways of composing worlds that radically call into play the relationship to modern cut-outs. By returning to political experiments such as the ZADs, but also to seemingly more innocuous approaches such as those which, blurring modern divisions, aim to reintroduce wild animals such as the falcon into highly urbanized environments, we show that deconstructing the idea of nature makes it possible to reinvent worlds that are freer and richer in life everywhere, even on the lawns of housing estates, in the cul-de-sac of a large city, in an industrial suburb or a protected natural area.

Prior Experience

Damien Darcis, Pour une écologie libertaire. Penser sans la nature, réinventer des mondes, Eterotopia, Paris, 2022, 200p. 

Mathias Rollot, Les territoires du vivant. Un manifeste biorégionaliste, WildProject, Paris, 2023, 189p.  

Aurélien Barrau, Le plus grand défi de l'Humanité. Face à la catastrophe écologique et sociale, Michel Lafon, Paris, 2020.
Bernard Charbonneau, Le Jardin de Babylone, Éditions de l'Encyclopédie des Nuisances, Paris, 2002.
Patrick Chastenet, Introduction à Jacques Ellul, La Découverte, Paris, 2019.
Gilles Clément, Le Manifeste du Tiers-Paysage en accès libre sur le site personnel de l'auteur. URL : http://www.gillesclement.com/cat-tierspaysage-tit-le-Tiers-Paysage.
Gaspard D'Allens, Main basse sur nos forêt, Seuil + Reporterre, Paris, 2019.
Gaspard d'Allens, Andrea Fuori, Bure, la bataille du nucléaire, Seuil + Reporterre, Paris, 2017
Alain Damasio, La Zone du Dehors, Folio SF, Paris, 2001.
Damien Darcis, Yves Weinand, Architexto 8, Éditions Fourre-tout + CIVA, Bruxelles, 2008.
Philippe Descola, Par-delà nature et culture, Gallimard, Paris, 2005.
La composition des mondes. Entretien avec Pierre Charbonnier, Champs, essais, Paris, 2014.
Une écologie des relations, CNRS Éditions, Paris, 2019.
Vinciane Despret, Habiter en oiseau, Acte Sud, Paris, 2019.
Jean Giono, Regain, Le Livre de Poche, Paris, 1995. [ROMAN]
Philippe Graton, Carnets de la ZAD, Éditions Filigranes, Paris, 2019.
David Harvey, Paris, capitale de la modernité, Les Prairies Ordinaires, Paris, 2012. 
Philippe Joutard, L'Invention du Mont blanc, Gallimard/Julliard, Paris, 1986.
Catherine et Raphaël Larrère, Penser et agir avec la nature. Une enquête philosophique, La Découverte/Poche, Paris, 2018.
Bruno Latour, Où atterrir ? Comment s'orienter en politique, La Découverte, Paris, 2017.
Face à Gaïa. Huit conférences sur le Nouveau Régime Climatique, La Découverte, Paris, 2015.
Henri Mendras, La fin des Paysans, Armand Collin, Paris, 1974.
Baptiste Morizot, Sur la Piste animale, Acte Sud, Paris, 2018.
Philippe Mulatier, Un Berger au pays des marmottes, Cabédita, Bière (Suisse), 2005.
Thierry Paquot, Ivan Illich. Pour une ascèse volontaire et conviviale, Le Passager clandestin, Lyon, 2019.
Désastres urbains. Les villes meurent aussiLa Découverte, Paris, 2015.
Michel Pastoureau, Le Loup. Une histoire culturelle, Seuil, Paris, 2018.
Le cochon. Histoire d'un cousin mal aimé, Gallimard, Paris, 2009.
Alessandro Pignocchi, La recomposition des mondes, Seuil, Paris, 2019. [BANDE DESSINEE]
Alain Roger, Court Traité du Paysage, Gallimard, Paris, 1997.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Rêveries du Promeneur solitaire, Éditions Ebooks libres et gratuit URL : https://ebooks-bnr.com/ebooks/pdf4/rousseau_reveries_promeneur_solitaire.pdf
Bernard Stiegler, La Technique et le Temps, Galilée, Paris, 1994.
Jean-Baptiste Vidalou, Être forêts. Habiter des territoires en lutte, La Découverte, Paris, 2017.
Andrea Wulf, L'Invention de la nature : Les aventures d'Alexander von Humboldt, Noir sur Blanc, Paris, 2017.