Title of lecture
Retaining walls: how to rethink the architecture of the territory

Streaming link: https://aho.cloud.panopto.eu/Panopto


Text description of the lecture
As infrastructures protecting our fragile territories against natural hazards such as landslides, mudflows or floodings, retaining walls are the result of a political action which manages the territorial planning. Despite the spread of this infrastructure in our changing landscapes, its design remains too largely dependent on civil engineering, which standardizes its shape and manufacturing. As an attempt to initiate a new way of designing our environment, this lecture proposes to consider the retaining wall as an architectural object participating in the sensitive construction of the landscape. How could a new design approach allow these restraining devices to reveal natural components and local resources of the territory, while strengthening the aesthetic relationship with our environment? 

Bio
Architect, co-founder of the architectural office MATERRA in Paris, and doctoral student at the University of the School of Architecture of Versailles and Cergy-Pontoise. 

In 2018, she graduated from the School of Architecture of Versailles and obtained a Master’s degree in visual culture at the School of Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences in Paris. Since 2020, she is pursuing a “Research by Design” PhD in architecture, working on the retaining walls as an infrastructural archetype which build the territory. 


In relation to her research, she’s teaching a project studio for Master’s degree at ENSA Versailles with the architect Nicolas Simon.




Typologies of retaining walls


Limestone landscapes. Credit: Arthur Crestani


Geological map with natural hazards, France



Retaining screen


Draining footbridge


Five retaining walls in Mounts of Cantal (FR). Credit: Arthur Crestani


Architectures of the territory