Gallery

Description

Ecological strategies often generate an over-production of materials, becoming “energyvores” and clients of factories, the polluters of the world. The real ecological combat is within the reappropriation of materials and experimentations with ready-made objects, far from the so-called benevolence of subsidized agencies. The student housing on Rue Amelot is a project that inserts itself into an urban interstice: the thickness of a blind wall. The urban form is an extension of the blind walls, which houses using the existing; no building is destroyed, and no pollution generated.

The skin consists of an existing module: the wooden pallet. Held using horizontal hinges, the pallets contract towards the top, allowing privacy or large openings. The modularity of the various palettes creates varied geometries, which are based on use and constantly regenerated. The reappropriation of materials recycles the existing without additional processing, which would cost energy in terms of production and create by-product pollution. The real environmental approach consists not in destruction, but in superimposing interventions upon our built heritage.

Biography

It was first through graffiti, a technique he adopted for over 10 years, that Stéphane Malka discovered the city and its untapped potential. He then began studying architecture in his home
town of Marseilles before completing his studies at the school of Paris-la Villette. After a period with Jean Nouvel, he set up his own studio; today, he makes use of two parallel but complementary practices. As a result of his graffiti period, Stéphane Malka has maintained a strong taste for ‘soft’ resistance and the neglected urban districts that he explores in his research.

His subject area is Paris, his modus operandi, spontaneity. In a continuous quest for abandoned
spaces capable of “creating new urban vitality”, his incisive and unexpected interventions
base themselves on the existing buildings, forming the backdrop for a new urbanity.