Invited Talk : Conférence d'Antoine Picon

Architecture has a privileged relationship with the question of materiality, if only because it is traditionally considered the most material of all the arts. In this lecture, we shall consider materiality as a relationship to the material world, the content of which must be historicized. Such historicization is urgently needed today, as architecture's relationship to the material world is being transformed by two factors and in apparently contradictory directions. The first is the rise of the digital, of computer-aided design and manufacture, soon to be supported by artificial intelligence. The second is the advent of the Anthropocene and the demands of sustainability. The conference will address the concrete content of the evolutions brought about by this double shock, as well as what they tell us more generally about our societies' relationship with the material world.