Valentin Daniel Maurice Bourdon

Valentin Bourdon est architecte Dr EPFL, chercheur postdoctorant et assistant d'enseignement. Il obtient son diplôme d'architecture en juillet 2013 à l’École d’Architecture de la Ville et des Territoires Paris-Est à Marne-la-Vallée sous la direction de Jacques Lucan, et son doctorat en septembre 2020 à l’EPFL sous la direction de Luca Ortelli. Depuis septembre 2021, il est coordinateur exécutif du Habitat Research Center et coordinateur du programme MAS ETH EPFL UTD. Engagé dans les recherches du Laboratoire de Construction et Conservation entre janvier 2017 et septembre 2021, il participe aussi à l'encadrement de l'atelier Housing - Théorie et critique du projet, en troisième année d'architecture. En 2019 il bénéficie d'un séjour académique de six mois au sein du Metrolab Bruxelles grâce au soutien du FNS, et multiplie pendant sa recherche les publications scientifiques et à destination du grand public. Son arrivée en Suisse et son retour dans le monde académique interviennent après une expérience professionnelle approfondie au sein de l’agence parisienne MGAU Michel Guthmann Architecture Urbanisme. De 2010 à 2016, il participe à la majorité des projets développés par l'agence et assure le suivi de plusieurs d'entre eux, aussi bien des logements collectifs que des projets urbains. Il est architecte habilité à exercer la maîtrise d’œuvre en son nom propre depuis janvier 2015.

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

Mon logement à l’épreuve du confinement : Quelles orientations pour l’après ?

Valentin Daniel Maurice Bourdon, Garance Clément, Claudine Bettina Karlen, Anna Pagani

Entre mai et juin 2020, des citoyen.ne.s scientifiques de toute la Suisse ont répondu à cette question dans des groupes de réflexion : les Citizen Think Tanks. Avec des chercheuses et chercheurs de l’EPFL, ils ont élaboré des scénarios pour l’avenir après la pandémie. Touchant à plusieurs thématiques, ces Citizen Think Tanks s'inscrivent dans une recherche collective sur les conditions de logement et le bien être durant le confinement dû au Covid-19. La recherche, intitulée ‘Corona Citizen Science’, implique une grande équipe interdisciplinaire de chercheurs et chercheuses de l’EPFL et UNIL, et de leurs instituts (IDIAP et IP), ainsi que les citoyen.ne.s, concerné.e.s directement par la crise du COVID-19. Ensemble, ils forment l’équipe de recherche scientifique et citoyenne sur le Coronavirus en Suisse. Plus précisément, la recherche vise à un apprentissage mutuel, aboutissant à la coproduction de stratégies d’adaptation aux crises futures. C’est dans ce cadre que, le 28 mai et 4 juin 2020, un groupe hétérogène de citoyen.ne.s scientifiques a réfléchi autour de notre logement... à l’épreuve du confinement.

2021

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