42 (?) Habitability Stories

In November 2022, the secondnational workshop of the Committed to the Quality of Tomorrow's Housing (Engagés pour la qualité des logements de demain) program took place. The winning teams participating in this innovative program and invited experts discussed the challenges of innovation and experimentation. For the occasion, Franck Boutté gave a conference entitled: 42 (?) Habitability Stories.

The number 42 is the computer’s answer to the Ultimate Question about Life, the Universe, and Everything formulated in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams. An absurd answer to an absurd question, it symbolizes the infinite number of possible answers to the systemic problems at play—and here, the number of stories chosen to present them.

“Committed to the Quality of Tomorrow’s Housing” is a program whose goal is to develop a set of actions that contribute to experimenting, through programming, with affordable solutions that can facilitate the reconciliation of enhanced quality of life in housing with the imperatives of ecological sobriety (energy and land in particular) and excellent architectural, urban, and heritage standards.