The seminar is organized by the architectural agency SCAU and Jérôme Denis.

The history of architecture is closely linked to designo, the creative concept that establishes a relationship with time and materials, driven by intention and upheld in the project. Maintenance, a mundane, endlessly repetitive activity, is at first glance the antithesis of designo. Here nothing is designed, nothing is created. Deployed in a present it contributes to thickening, maintenance cultivates the continuity of things that already exist by dealing with the ongoing transformations of matter. However, at a time of climate and environmental crisis, it seems very likely that those who practice this art of making things last have a lot to teach architects. Because they place fragility and wear at the heart of an ecology of attention that breaks with the promises of modernity, because they deploy forms of material diplomacy that do away with human pretensions to mastery and control, because they distribute responsibilities beyond the figure of the inventor, maintenance activities draw lines of flight that can help rethink architecture by considering what in it escapes the temptation of the singular creative act.

It is through this breach, which opens up to the concerns and expertise of maintenance, and in a context of profound change in the act of building, that we propose to explore and question the relationship that architecture cultivates with these common things that hold us and inhabit us, betting on a partnership approach, multidisciplinary and open to all parties involved.

Participation is free but registration is required. Please register here.
The seminar will be held in French.

2025 Program

Friday March 28, 2025, 10-12am. Venue: SCAU, 35 rue Tournefort, 75005 Paris.

“Material fragility and maintenance under constraints: building to the test of reality”, a look back at some projects by the SCAU agency.

Friday April 11, 2025, 10am to 1pm. Venue: Mines Paris – PSL, 60 bd Saint-Michel 75006 Paris.

Maintaining in common: co-ownership beyond the infraordinary

Thursday, June 12, 5 to 7 p.m. Venue: Agence SCAU – 35 rue Tournefort, 75005 Paris.

Insurance and Maintenance: from vanishing line to breaking point