Valentin Daniel Maurice Bourdon

Valentin Bourdon is an architect, postdoctoral researcher and teaching assistant. He obtained the french architectural diploma in 2013 from the École d’Architecture de la Ville et des Territoires Paris-Est at Marne-la-Vallée under the direction of Jacques Lucan, and completed his PhD at EPFL in 2020, under the supervision of Luca Ortelli. Since September 2021, he coordinates the Habitat Research Center at EPFL. Involved in the studies of the Laboratory of Construction and Conservation between 2017 and 2021, he also contributes in the supervision of its Housing Studio - Project Theory and Criticism for architecture bachelor. During his doctoral research, he benefited of an academic stay at Metrolab Brussels in 2019 with the support of the SNSF, and published multiple scientific and non-academic publications. His arrival in Switzerland and return to the academic world take place after a thorough professional experience in the parisian office MGAU Michel Guthmann Architecture Urbanisme. From 2010 to 2016, he participed to the majority of its developed projects and supervised several of them, both collective dwellings projects and urban projects.

Citizen Think Tanks: co-designing post-pandemic housing futures

Claudia Rebeca Binder Signer, Valentin Daniel Maurice Bourdon, Livia Bianca Fritz, Anna Pagani

During the first wave of COVID-19, Swiss residents found themselves spending most of their time in homes unable to accommodate the needs hitherto met by cities. While scholars and practitioners have proposed strategies to mitigate the effects of housing deficiencies on inhabitants’ wellbeing, the contribution of all citizens involved in housing production and use cannot be overlooked. Therefore, this research aimed to offer spaces for mutual learning to co-design post-pandemic housing futures. Two Citizens Think Tanks (CTTs) were organised in spring 2020 as part of the transdisciplinary project Swiss Corona Citizen Science, involving eight to ten participants in two online sessions. The first CTT aimed to discuss housing conditions before and during the confinement. The analysis of the recordings and whiteboards led to the identification of three variables, namely (i) space for oneself, (ii) physical private space, and (iii) space for social interactions, using which we developed possible scenarios for the future of housing. The latter were presented in the second CTT using short stories and images, shaping a shared imaginary. The most desirable scenario was voted on, followed by a collective reflection on pathways to achieve it. The scenario ‘reinvesting the community’, resulting from an increase in personal and social space and a reduction in the physical one, was voted as the most desirable. Obstacles and opportunities that this vision entails included sharing and learning to share; ways of recreating a neighbourhood ‘spirit’; designing housing that allows for encounters, welcomes different cultures, and addresses desires for appropriation. The CTTs highlighted how different types of knowledge can contribute to the production of strategies to cope with present and future crises, generating questions that open up new avenues of research. They offered an example of how scientists and practitioners can interact with and benefit from the multiple voices of inhabitants.

2022

Cooperative or undifferentiated: Two visions for housing

Valentin Daniel Maurice Bourdon

Throughout Europe, the dominant housing production practices of the last century seem to be running out of steam. Housing is looking for a future. The weakening of the power of the state, the instability of the markets and the ecological emergency have led to the emergence of another way of thinking based on the "common". Still in the process of being defined at the interdisciplinary level, this dynamic could distinguish two directions on the architectural level. The first is quantitatively the most marginal, and yet the most mediatized. It concerns the fascination exerted by the recent achievements of housing cooperatives on European architects. In the lead, Zurich's experiences represent a horizon of action on its own for the rest of Europe. At their peak, housing in clusters embodies the highest level of innovation in the sharing of living space, as a socially, economically and environmentally virtuous solution. The experiences of sharing by small communities, in a positive assimilation of the theory of commons, represents a first axis of innovation. Taking an opposite direction to the local affirmation of sharing, the second axis is that of non-differentiation; in support of a much broader tradition of what “common” means: that of the city, of public space, of globalization, in a greater integration of difference and diversity. It involves the development of the services economy, the uprooting of professional activity, the increase in life mobilities, in other words the saving through large-scale sharing. It approaches the question of the third way in a more liberal but also indisputably more widespread form, in a fragmentation of public and private registers, which cooperative housing continues to preserve. Distinguishing these two trajectories, on the theoretical and spatial levels, seems useful to glimpse the spatial stakes, but also the cross-potentialities, of major deformations of the domestic sphere.

University of Nottingham2020

Cooperative or undifferentiated: Two visions for housing

Valentin Daniel Maurice Bourdon

University of Nottingham2020

Citizen Think Tanks: co-designing post-pandemic housing futures

Claudia Rebeca Binder Signer, Valentin Daniel Maurice Bourdon, Livia Bianca Fritz, Anna Pagani

2022