Living landscape _ Saint-Quentin – France

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Here, architecture is an instrument of environments

Video — 2023

General principles

This project is both a living environment and a permanent laboratory where Arkhenspaces develops and tests its research on dwelling and subtle architecture.

Conceived as a full-scale experiment, it explores architecture as an instrument of environments, capable of influencing perceptions, uses, relationships and everyday atmospheres.

The dwelling becomes a field of observation and experimentation where architecture, ecology, sensations, behaviors and lifestyles intersect.

A dwelling in motion

The living space expands through volume and multiplies the possible uses of the home.

Through the Relief Furniture (a demonstration developed during lockdown through a narrative and fourteen one-minute films), the dwelling becomes adaptable, transformable and capable of evolving according to the needs of its inhabitants.

The project interacts with its environment to generate new environments and continuously renew perceptions and experiences.

A laboratory of atmospheres

The project explores light, optical phenomena, materials, touch, colors, living systems, rhythms, memory, comfort and the relationships between individuals and their environment.

Reflection, projection, diffraction, ventilation, temperature, urban vegetation, reuse, sounds, smells, materials, textures, touch, chance and appropriation become design materials in their own right.
Particular attention is given to how materials influence perception and behaviour, whether through tactile and acoustic impressions or the sensations generated by contact between the body, the floor, the walls and the furniture.

The objective is to understand how architecture can reveal, compose and transform everyday environments.

Between experimentation and influences

This ar(t)chitecture in motion finds some of its roots in the works of Claude Parent, Gordon Matta-Clark, Isidore Isou, Dan Graham, Marcel Duchamp and Nicolas Schöffer.

It extends these reflections through a contemporary approach attentive to uses, perceptions and the interactions between inhabitants and their environments.

Dwelling as a research method

It was important for me (EC) to have a place where ideas under development could be tested quickly within a real inhabited environment.

This daily experimentation makes it possible to evaluate, refine and enrich architectural concepts related to the senses, spatiality, uses and living together.

The dwelling thus becomes both a place to live and a research instrument.

Architecture is an instrument of environments.