Unité de Recherche Architectures, Environnement et Cultures Constructives

By bringing together the research potential of the CRATerre-ENSAG and Constructive Cultures laboratories, the Architecture, Environment and Constructive Cultures Research Unit addresses the central issue of housing and housing in relation to the issues of sustainable development and eco -construction. This unavoidable question is directly linked to the choice of the type of development to which we wish to go.

In France, reports on poor housing at the Fondation Abbé Pierre highlight the housing deficit suffered by our country. Just over six million people live in precarious conditions today, which represents almost ten per cent of the French population. Beyond this fringe that is experiencing growing difficulties, housing remains a major item of expenditure for the rest of our fellow citizens. Even more widely, the issue of access to home ownership and credit is, for most of us, an issue at the level of a lifetime ... In this context, difficulties in access to housing - despite the The existence of a right to housing now enshrined in legislation - question architects as actors in the production process in the construction sector. Although they can not intervene on all aspects, it is their responsibility to reflect on this fundamental issue and to participate proactively in the search for the most appropriate spatial and technical solutions to the evolutions of the situation. We consider it essential that our research unit take up this issue and
Generations of designers concerned. At the international level, the issue is even more sensitive. More than half of the world's population lives in spatial conditions of notorious discomfort and, in too many cases, in hygiene and safety conditions that are not even worthy of the minimum standards recognized by United Nations …

The issue of access to housing also has a different level of complexity in situations of prevention and management of natural disaster risks on which researchers in the unit are also positioned. So it's a global issue that concerns us all.