It is a career that Margot Servières, architecture student, will never forget. “The professor announced that we would focus mainly on construction with concrete, a resource-intensive material. How is it possible that these types of courses still exist today? »the 24-year-old says indignantly. If in 2020 she is the only one who closes her computer and leaves the room at the National School of Architecture (ENSA) in Montpellier, there are many around her who feel a kind of discomfort.
In 2023, “ENSA in struggle” – The demonstration movement of an unusual scale, which brought together students, teachers and administrative staff from all schools of architecture, calls for better management of training needs. In a manifesto, a group of ENSA Normandie students calls for the end of “The era of baby boomer star architects”. They express a “total rejection of competitive, media and consumerist architecture in order to be able to build more humble and fair architectures together”. There are so many thoughts that today are shaking up the education provided at ENSA and transforming the professional trajectories of young graduates.
Architecture must position itself in relation to the challenges posed by the century, summarizes Christine Leconte, director of ENSA Paris-Belleville: “In the 20thmy century, we wanted to accommodate everyone. Today we are interested in climate change and the loss of biodiversity. » Proof of this is the evolution of the students’ final projects, continues M.me leconte: “In the early 2000s, projects were still very focused on new construction. Today, the majority starts from the existing situation and focuses on rehabilitation. »
The director of ENSA Saint-Etienne, Cédric Libert, made the same observation during the admission interviews: “What is an architecture school in a world where they tell us we should stop building? The young people who join us feel less and less moved by the figure of the heroic architect, like Le Corbusier. [1887-1965] or Zaha Hadid [1950-2016]. They consider architecture as a way to reconnect with nature, through a different intervention on our environment. »
Today’s students are very informed, adds Christine Leconte: “They know that we have made the territory sick because of the way we have settled. We must be at the forefront of these issues, if we do not want to be accused of being “old”. »
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