Bertrand MALBAUX

ELEMENTS is a workshop : a multidisciplinary place of emulation where computers, hand drawings and models go together. Founded by architects from diverse horizons, the workshop, from the outset, is a place to share and confront various points of views which aim is an apprehension and a respect of the place in all its components, human and non-human, in order to feel it and to intensify our awareness of it. Our work is based on a very simple fact : we are part and parcel of what we call "nature". We are linked to her, to the other expressions of life, to the elements. This web of connections makes the place unique. We believe this uniqueness is precious and that each time it falls to us to dis-cover these new relations between sun, winds, materials, human cultures, languages, animals, vegetation... Therefore, each project is unique and each building is "endemic" like an endemic animal or plant species that is appropriate to a particular territory. The building becomes a revealer of the place we live in. It is an intermediary, a potential that doesn't exist for itself. Whatever the location, we always start with an intense immersion into the place where we collect, we take, we "steal" all we need to define the project, to question the program, to insert the building in the inhabitants dailylife, to hold a dialog with the sun, the winds, the vegetation... An imaginary slowly emerges from these early stages and the project gradually takes another dimension, beyond functional, technical and anthropocentric considerations.

Architecture