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LSA 220- Reflection II

October 2014
Rafael Lopez Pegoraro
From Architecture to environment, Environment of Architecture
Elodie Nourrigat, teacher at the Montepelier School of Architecture and partner of NBJ
Architects in France, came to Syracuse University to address a lecture in the subject of the relationship
of architecture and the environment. This subject was approached by an educational standpoint by
using the example of her experience as a teacher in Montepelier. The relationship between architecture
is addressed by that program using what Nourrigat called engagements, which is related to the analysis
phase in the design process, and a few characteristics that need to be taken in consideration in the
phase of the proposal of something new.
The engagements explained by Nourrigat are four principles that compose the way architecture
should approach the question of locality, or the identification of problems and potentials in a site. The
first engagement is the importance of the specific locality. By understanding why that locality is different
from others the architectural proposal can be strengthen and better. The second engagement is the
priority of territorial needs over implementation of general rules. This engagement try to avoid
architecture as a response to general regulations, which happens often according to Nourrigat, but the
real needs of a territory is more important than fulfilling requirements of standardized rules and factors.
Another engagement is the use of locality as a spatial system and not a simple style. This requires an
understanding of components of that system and an understanding of their relationship, which is much
more complex and meaningful than a mimesis of local styles, which are predefined ideas. The last
engagement refers to the sum of urban and architectural scales. The architectural propose should suit
not only the lot and the neighborhood where it is placed, it should have a meaning across scales.
Also, Nourrigat addressed characteristics to which architectural design projects give special
attention. The first characteristic is the interconnectivity of flows. Understanding the flows system is
important because it delineates a strategy to keep the architectural proposal as mediation between the
territory and the small scale of the place, and it should emerge in the conceptual phase as a strategy of
territory prior to designing proposal. The Next category is the proposal of new urban connections, which
I understood that should happen in two modes, vertical and floor plan, and two dimensions, denotation
and connotation. This should appear in a diagrammatic phase of the project which would address, for
example, physical connections that a floor plan inserts in a local system, or physical connections that the
verticality of the building could insert between two points of the territory distinct in height, or even new
meanings that can be created by seeing a city from the rooftop of this building. Another characteristic is

LSA 220- Reflection II


October 2014
Rafael Lopez Pegoraro
the insertion of the project as part of a larger landscape. By making the landscape as a intermediary
scale flow into the architectural project, all four engagements can be applied and a strategy of urban
development can emerge. One example given by Nourrigat is the use of urban agriculture as a strategy
to develop cities across scales. This idea of urban development leads to the last characteristic that is the
character of temporal transition of architecture. By exploring this characteristic the project should be
able to propose renovation and requalification of space according to specific opportunities and
problems over a period of time.
To sum up the lecture given by Elodie Nourrigat, the architectural project should engage the
question of locality and the design proposal should take the relationship between the building and the
site in consideration. The idea of having four engagements and exploring four characteristics transcends
the predefined idea of professional fields; instead, it starts to lead towards an architecture that is a
philosophy of the open space.

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