Traces, LAN

The city is the starting point and the finishing line of the “architecture experience”: as such, it is a tangible exteriority, as well as a product of the mind, an abstraction. This book attempts to reconstruct this trajectory and to describe this exchange through the traces it has left behind. The two distinct moments, that in which the city is the scene of an experience – and therefore of a reflection – and that in which the architect modifies this scene through a new project, are at the foundation of the very structure of this book, and of its form.

The white notebooks are collections of writings, reflections and observations - the fruit, over the past 10 years, of the urban experiences of the LAN agency. The black notebooks attempt to define the scope of their research and their practice of architecture: a team profession, where the experiences and ideas of one or the other are found in common visions and projects.

Through a black notebook, Atelier Franck Boutté addresses the theme of bioclimatic design. The building and the urban project are thought of as transformers, rather than as consumers of resources. Six projects designed with the LAN agency illustrate this idea of transformers and transformations through six criteria: climate, use, strategy, morphology, materiality and systems.