Mieux avec moins

Better with less, Architecture and frugality for peace

It is a well-known and terrible fact: the uninhabitable is being concreted all over the planet. The builders are largely responsible for this; They know that one ton of concrete generates one ton of CO2, that sand is running out everywhere, that high-rise buildings consume a lot of energy, that “passive” housing (which consumes less than 15 kWh/m2/year) is not encouraged, that the building and public works sector, in France that the building and public works sector in France produces each year the equivalent of 3,400 kilograms of waste per inhabitant, i.e. 70% of the total, that know-how is being lost, that the de-skilling of the building trades is becoming widespread, that hectares of land are being abusively artificialised, that shapeless megacities are unfolding like urban sprawls without quality…

Faced with these disasters, ecologists, men and women, have been proposing, for more than a century, analyses, alternative solutions, other ways of making and thinking about “human settlements” that repair the Earth and offer each inhabitant the possibility of establishing his or her home in harmony with the living and respecting nature. All is not hopeless…

To the dark side of the “damage of progress”, Philippe Madec opposes the “good news”: the imperative of reuse, the praise of the close, the choice of renewable energies, the relational intensity which exalts the collective intelligence, the power of action alongside nature to appease our recourse to natural resources, and to go towards a better with less…