Innovations durables

Architecture and technologies are closely linked, even though they develop with different rhythms. Their relationship is therefore complex, and the to-and-fro between them punctuates the whole history of architecture. In spite of their rationalist discourse, modern movements have never understood how or been able to bring them both together, and this dichotomy is even more evident today, when contemporary architecture only rarely makes use of the increasingly sophisticated technologies, especially those relating to energy saving, sustainability and respect for the natural environment. The evidence is there in the extraordinary lack of architectural formulations that incorporate solar rollector systems, or of projects that make any ecological claims. This absence is not total. Some architects are interested in the so-called "alternative" technologies and have absorbed them in order to develop projects for sustainable units and High Environmental Quality buildings. The formulations are varied, sometimes spectacular, but never gratuitous - a sign of the maturity of a new generation of architects and of the birth of an architecture that can answer better to the worries of an age seeking to preserve its future, This is the message of this book, which shows that although the discipline of architecture always expresses its own time, it can also look to the future. Book jacket.