◀︎ Lectures / beyond cycle

The art of architectural grafting

Jeanne Gang & Emanuele Coccia

Conversation on Thursday 21 March 2024 at 8pm with
Jeanne Gang, architect, founder of Studio Gang and author of the book
Emanuele Coccia, philosopher

Conversation in English
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How can architecture learn from nature to combat climate change?

Join Jeanne Gang and guest Emanuele Coccia to celebrate the launch of Gang’s new book, The art of architectural grafting, with a lively conversation and reception. Motivated by the urgent need to reduce architecture’s carbon footprint, Gang in her book proposes a fresh concept for adaptive reuse that is inspired by the regenerative capacity of plants. Through exploring the horticultural technique of grafting and applying it to architecture and urban design, the book urges us to see the cultural and environmental value in our existing building stock—and to expand on it in ways that bring new beauty and opportunity to our communities.

Informations

Conversation on Thursday 21 March 2024 at 8pm at the Pavillon de l'Arsenal
Organised to mark the publication of the book "The art of architectural grafting" by Jeanne Gang

BIOS

American architect Jeanne Gang founded and leads Studio Gang, an international architecture and urban design practice based in Chicago with offices in New York, San Francisco, and Paris. Diverging from trends of pure formalism, where design is dedicated to shaping stand-alone objects, her creativity is sparked by the specific conditions of things and the relationships among them. Her design energy focuses on making architecture that strengthens kinship among people, their communities, and the natural world. Drawing insight from ecological systems, her work intriguingly merges art and science to create places where unexpected beauty and a sense of wonder can be experienced by everyone. Her award-winning projects span scales and typologies, with an increasing focus on addressing the climate crisis through the adaptive reuse and renewal of buildings and the revitalization of urban environments in partnership with their communities.

In addition to leading design at Studio Gang, Jeanne is a Professor in Practice at the Harvard Graduate School of Design, her alma mater, where her teaching and research explore resilience and reuse. She is the author of three books on architecture and has published essays in periodicals such as L’Architecture d’Aujourd’hui, Domus, and The Plan. The most recent book about her practice is the monograph Studio Gang: Architecture, published by Phaidon in both English (2020) and French (2021).

Emanuele Coccia is maître de conférences at the EHESS in Paris. He is notably the author of La vie des plantes (2016), Métamorphose (2020) et Philosophie de la maison (2021), which have been translated into several languages. He has recently published a book on photo-theory with the Dutch photographer Viviane Sassen (Modern Alchemy, 2022), a philosophical epistolary on light with the photographer Paolo Roversi (Lettres sur la lumières, 2024), and a book on the relationship between fashion and philosophy with the former creative director of Gucci, Alessandro Michele (La vita delle forme. Filosofia del Re-Incanto, 2024).

Coccia has co-directed animated videos such as Quercus (2019, avec Formafantasma) and Heaven in Matter (2021, avec Faye Formisano). He has also collaborated on the creation of exhibitions on fashion (The Many Lives of a Garment ITS, Trieste, avec Olivier Saillard) and on art and ecology (Dancing with All, 21 Century Museum Kanazawa, in collaboration with Yuko Hasegawa).