Notes

Bruce Bégout: A World Without Ruins

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by LDV Studio Urbain

The urban fabric, and architecture in particular, has always been a testament to past societies, and to the way in which civilizations preceding our own lived and were organized. However, after the construction of prestigious ancient works and the ingenious buildings of modernity, it may well be that today’s architecture is an exception. What if our current era of consumerism and industrial capitalism is doomed to no longer produce ruins? This is a question asked by Bruce Bégout in his book Obsolescence des ruines, published in 2022 by Éditions Inculte. Continue reading →

The Folly of the New Towns: From Infatuation to Torpor

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By LDV Studio Urbain

In recent years, ambitious visions of “new cities” have proliferated across the globe – futuristic urban experiments promising innovation, sustainability and human flourishing. From the high deserts of the American Southwest to the arid plateaus of the Arabian Peninsula, these projects are marketed as bold blueprints of tomorrow’s world: climate-responsive, technologically sophisticated and socially equitable.

But despite their rhetorical appeal and visionary aesthetics, such projects often raise more questions than answers. What lies beneath the allure of these so-called “smart cities”? Who funds them, and to what end? Do they represent genuine models for future urbanism, or are they merely monuments to excess, destined to fade into obsolescence like so many failed utopias before them? Continue reading →

Agriculture and Urbanism – Reconciling the Twin Sisters

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cle des champsCurrently on display at the Belle de Mai in Marseille, the exhibition Taking the Country’s Side, imagined by Sébastien Marot, shifts the gaze: it is not a question of knowing what is invented in the city to accommodate agriculture, but of seeing what is invented in the countryside to conceive the urban models of tomorrow. Permaculture, since it develops principles of design of inhabited spaces, occupies a very special place.

The Transversal Plan on Water Management, Agriculture and Regional Planning in France (PTEAA), published by the French government in 2024, is a major historical turning point for French agriculture, breaking with more than a century of industrialisation and productivism. Indeed, the calamitous drought of 2023 has forced all political parties to face the facts: there is an urgent need to build a different relationship with the land. Continue reading →