The language of architecture in the Anthropocene era

In 1986, just after the Chernobyl disaster, the German sociologist Ulrich Beck wrote in Risk Society: “We learned to respond to the threats of external nature by building huts and accumulating knowledge. But we are virtually defenceless against the threats from this second nature internal to the industrial system.”1 What is the language of the huts of this second nature? Is it possible to identify traits, a vocabulary, even an aesthetic register that architecture could adopt in response to the anthropocene? This essay proposes to explore the conditions under which this architecture of the new climatic regime2 is emerging and to investigate whether this demands the development of a new language or a new project methodology.

The difficulty of a composite narrative

The issue of the environment really came to the fore in society in the late 1980s: this environmental narrative was driven at the time by different global events, such as the setting up of the IPCC at the end of 1988, the publication of its first report in 1990, the Rio Earth Summit in 1992, as well as explored in different, sometimes discordant writings, such as Félix Guattari’s The Three Ecologies (1989), The Natural Contract by Michel Serres (1990), Bruno Latour’s We Have Never Been Modern (1991) or Luc Ferry’s The New Ecological Order (1992). This environmentalist narrative is plural, mostly polarised around three perspectives very well documented by the environmental historians Christophe Bonneuil and Jean-Baptiste Fressoz:3 green growth, rooted in a capitalism that has not given up on progress or industry and proposes an ecological version of both; degrowth, originating in a Marxist vision of society and the rejection of the neoliberal world; and finally collapsology, a perspective characterised by the idea of an inevitable ecological eschatology.

In the architectural milieu, this same multiplicity can be observed in the handling of the environmental issue, where the language focuses on sustainable green development and green engineering, and the discourses are about reuse, urban ecology or mesology. Beyond the political issue and the growth-degrowth divide, the issue of the environment in architecture is particular composite because of the multiple approaches possible and the sometimes contradictory goals. Let’s look at an example. Research carried out by the LPO, France’s bird protection league, and the City of Paris, shows that the capital’s sparrow population fell by 72% between 2003 and 2016.4 One of the reasons identified is the lack of anfractuosity in the city, notably caused by thermal renovations to buildings and the spread of external heat insulation. Yet this improvement in thermal performance is one of the cornerstones of the goal of energy efficiency in architecture. In this specific case, therefore, there is a contradiction between two ecological objectives, energy efficiency and biodiversity, which each generate a different formal solution and vocabulary.

Between a technophile and low-tech approach, between environmental integration and energy efficiency, ecological architecture is thus riddled with different and highly heterogeneous perspectives. Is it the composite nature of the narrative that makes it difficult to identify a language? Perhaps. Let us step away a little and consider the example of postmodern architecture. It too is highly composite, diverse and multiple, which is in fact partly what defines it. Yet postmodern architecture constructs a language that has been largely documented by Charles Jencks5 and other architecture critics. How does the postmodern convert heterogeneity into a language when the multiplicity of ecological approaches seems to neutralise any form of identification?

It can easily be argued that the composite nature of ecological architecture is not enough to explain why we experience difficulties in establishing its language. For example, the ecological architecture that dominated the 2000s – i.e. sustainable architecture – is partly defined by the fact that it has made extensive inroads into architectural production without changing the appearance of that production. It does not propose a new language: the energy-saving systems it employs are discreet and often lack major formal implications. Only perhaps the spread of exterior thermal cladding, as shown very clearly in the article “Use-by Date, check packaging”6 by the architecture critic Ariane Wilson, discreetly introduces a slightly different language.

A narrative without theory?

If we pursue the parallel with postmodern architecture, we might suggest that the reason why the latter constructed a language is perhaps because it first developed a strong and structured theoretical discourse. This discourse is presented in major works of architectural history, such as The Language of Postmodern Architecture by Charles Jencks (1979) or Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture by Robert Venturi (1966), in sometimes heated debates between theoreticians of the modern movement and of postmodernism, and finally by exhibitions that highlight the ideological and formal divergences between neo-moderns and postmoderns. The theory on which postmodern architecture is founded is solid and dense, and as a result can be represented in a fruitful and easily identifiable language. Observation of the conditions under which architects assert ecological values offers us a few ways to understand the fragility of theory in ecological architecture. Consideration for the environment developed in architectural circles in the 1990s and 2000s in two stages. On the one hand, among the pioneers who, starting in the 1990s (and sometimes – often – in the previous decades), were committed in both their words and their projects to an ecological architecture: these pioneers did not pursue an overarching theoretical debate in the architecture community, or at least any such debate remained marginal. On the other hand, the world climate summits institutionalised environmental goals and contributed to the development of energy regulations that heavily affected buildings from the early 2000s. Building firms and clients rallied to the cause: new markets developed, and environmental goals, now institutionalised, were supported and sustained by construction firms. The different institutions in the architecture industry, notably the National Council of the Order of Architects, espoused ecology as a major and crucial issue: it became a fundamental aspect of all architectural production from the mid-2000s onwards. The conditions in which ecology emerged as an architectural issue were themselves not conducive to the development of in-depth theoretical debate, since ecology was brutally imposed on architects by the dominant structures (political, financial, institutional) without generating ideasbased discussion within the profession.

A diversion in method

It is undoubtedly difficult to identify the language of the composite narrative that frames ecology in the architectural milieu. Undoubtedly too, the theory of ecological architecture is perhaps still somewhat fragile and weakly structured compared with the modern movement’s architectural theory or postmodern architecture theory. So what does ecology do to architecture? If we observe the implications of the new climatic regime for the architecture project as a whole, if we examine the contributions of the different ideas and tools of sociologists, historians, anthropologists and philosophers of the environment to architectural design, we can identify a few stimulating stirrings. It is perhaps here, hidden in project method, that we can find the real disruption caused by the ecologist narrative.

The writings of the philosopher Bruno Latour, widely cited in architecture schools, in research centres and in the discourses of certain architects, seem to have contributed to a change in the tools of architectural design.7 The philosopher, who thought at length about our modern heritage and about ecological crisis, also built systems and proposed methods for thinking about the architectural project in a world governed by the new climatic regime. Actor-network theory, which he developed with Michel Callon and Madeleine Akrich in the 1980s, is used to understand the ramifications of the project process, interpret the role of the actors, and decipher the complexity of situations. The tools of controversy mapping, a didactic version of actor-network theory developed by Latour, are also taught in seminars and project workshops in some architecture schools and architectural practices. While Latour’s thought stimulates questions in the architecture community about the crisis of modern values and ecological eschatology, it primarily affects the design process in the architecture project. Listening to the actors, giving a voice to otter populations, to the hole in the ozone layer or to an overflowing stream, leads to a decentring of the way the project is conceived and produced. A similar effect is proposed by the philosophers and exhibition curators Kantuta Quiros and Aliocha Imhoff in their book Qui parle (pour les non humains)8 –Who speaks (for nonhumans) – which explores the tools that can be introduced to hear what these silent actors have to say, through systems of translation, spokesmanship, and attention protocols that can convey the voice of the voiceless. This also challenges the role of architects themselves, proposing a transition from the architect as author to the architect as inquirer, tasked with restoring the project territory in all its complexity and its inhabitants in all their diversity.

In 1988, the architect and teacher Anatole Kopp published the book Quand le moderne n’était pas un style mais une cause9 (When the modern was not a style but a cause), which explores the expression of ideas in style in a postmodern era characterised by performative languages. If the idea of the anthropocene has brutally disrupted the world of architecture, the low level of the latter’s engagement is perhaps an indication that the language is still in gestation or that the theoretical foundation on which this architecture of transition stands is still fragile. It is perhaps, and especially, also an indication that architecture in the anthropocene is questioning the very conditions of its conception, its production and its implementation, is examining its methodologies and is refining its tools. From these tools, from this method, there may perhaps emerge an architecture of actors, an architecture on the lookout for clues that enable it to design places in which humans, vulpes, coleoptera and a host of others can coexist.

1 Ulrich Beck, La société du risque. Sur la voie d’une autre modernité, Traduction de Risikogesellschaft (1re ed. Suhrkamp Verlag, 1986), Aubier, 2001, p. 9 (our translation).

2 Expression borrowed from Bruno Latour, notably used by him in Facing Gaia: Eight Lectures on the New Climatic Regime, La Découverte, 2015.

3 See in particular, Christope Bonneuil, Jean-Baptiste Fressoz, The Shock of the Anthropocene: The Earth, History and Us, Verso, 2017.

4 LPO Île-de-France (lpo-idf.fr): https://lpo-idf.fr/?pg=do&sj=30

5 See Charles Jencks, Language of Postmodern Architecture, London Academy, 1979.

6 Ariane Wilson, “Date de péremption, voir l’emballage”, Criticat, n°17, 20160, pp. 89-113.

7 Margaux Darrieus, Léa Mosconi, “Bruno Latour ou le retour de la philosophie en architecture” AMC, annuel 2022, janvier 2023.

8 Kantuta Quiros, Aliocha Imhoff, Qui parle ? (Pour les non humains), PUF, 2022.

9 Anatole Kopp, Quand le moderne n’était pas un style mais une cause, Edition des Beaux-arts, 1988.