Manifesto
(1) To build is first to inhabit the Earth.
Every architecture transforms a part of our common refuge: the biosphere. It mobilizes resources, modifies an existing milieu and influences the relationships between living beings. Building therefore implies understanding the contexts in which we take place: climates, landscapes, cultures, resources, uses and the memories of places.
This attention to context is not a constraint but a condition of precision. Every architecture is inscribed within an environment and contributes to creating new ones.
(2) Architecture does not only consist in producing objects or buildings. It creates environments. It is lived more than it is seen.
An environment cannot be reduced to its geometry or its materiality. It is made of atmospheres, lights, sounds, temperatures, movements, uses, perceptions and relations. It acts upon us before we act upon it.
(3) Architecture thus becomes an art of relation: relation to a place, to a climate, to a landscape, to a practice or to a group.
But every relation also implies the possibility of distance.
An architecture of relation is not an architecture of permanent connection. It makes possible both encounters and withdrawals, both exchanges and intimacies.
This reflection has notably developed through the exploration of mobility infrastructures. Roads, networks and service areas reveal that architecture does not only concern places, but also the links that bind them together.
For several decades, a major transformation has enriched this reflection: the emergence of digital networks.
(4) The contemporary environment is now both material and immaterial.
Our living places are physical and virtual, crossed by flows of information, data, networks and interactions that extend physical space into new relational dimensions.
To describe this emerging reality, we have developed the concept of n-spaces.
(5) N-spaces designate spaces augmented by potential links, information, temporalities and new possibilities. The “n” refers to the idea of complementary dimensions that enrich the built environment.
We no longer inhabit a singular space, but a plural space connected to others.
Each additional dimension opens new forms of interaction between beings, places and milieus.
Unfolding space through its dimensions has led us to explore several fields of research.
[ Unfoldings ]
(6) To rethink architecture no longer as the organization of static spaces, but as the coordination of space-times and relations.This opens new perspectives for making better use of existing resources, improving the efficiency of places, fostering their resilience and extending their lifespan.
(7) Unfolding the third dimension has led us towards the notions of Reliefs and EnVol: an architecture that explores volumes more fully, transforms surfaces into landscapes and multiplies the possibilities of inhabiting.
(8) Unfolding the temporal dimension has led us to envision architecture as an Instrument of Environments.
Seasons, climates, uses, the movements of the sun, the wind or inhabitants become active components of the project. Architecture is no longer fixed; it reveals, plays with, amplifies, accompanies or transforms the phenomena that surround it.
(9) Beyond time, the new relations enabled by physical and digital environments have led us towards the concept of the Active Building.
A building capable of evolving, being shared, learning and producing more uses and services from the same material reality. A building that makes better use of its spatial, energy and human resources while facilitating relations between its inhabitants and their environments.
The challenge is less to add than to unfold.[ e(t)ssence ]
(10) We call subtle an architecture capable of acting simultaneously upon the material and immaterial dimensions of an environment.An architecture attentive to the visible and invisible resonances that constitute a place.
(11) These researches pursue a common horizon: to conceive environments, buildings and cities that are more efficient, more resilient and more attentive to the living.
To open a field of possibilities, encounters and the unexpected.
At the urban scale, they lead us to explore the idea of the Subtle City, where physical and digital dimensions enrich relations, perceptions and sensitivities.
Architecture does not only respond to needs; it nourishes imaginaries, suggests situations and makes new ways of inhabiting desirable.
(12) Above all, architecture remains the first of the arts.
An art capable of giving form to our aspirations. It draws as much from vernacular knowledge as from the technical innovations of its time.
Architecture thus participates in an expanded ecology where resources, uses, relations, imaginaries and sensitivities are inseparable.
Preserving the Earth remains a necessity.
But beyond this necessity, building also consists in affirming singularities, inspiring collective aspirations, producing momentum, emotion, surprise, wonder and meaning.
Creating the conditions for a life that is richer, more conscious, more open and more beautiful.
Créer une ville, c’est ajouter des ailes (ll) à la vie.
To create a city is to add wings to life.
Eric Cassar, 2026
Thinking and building to make Architecture liVe.