Victor Petit In discussion with Sophie Dars and Carlo Menon
Monday 6 May 2024, 6.30 pm
If any building designed according to the currently dominant architectural principles is ‘zombie’, non-living, as it is based on technologies and energies that will soon be exhausted or too costly for the planet, how can we rethink our relationship with buildings and technology? What are the possible attitudes between the usual categories of cutting-edge technology, high-tech, and its antonym, low-tech? His talk will attempt to explain the alternative of the milieu-tech, which sees machines not as our gods or our slaves, but as our children.
Double page spread from the book by Nathalie Bruyère, Catherine Geels, Victor Petit (eds.), Global Tools, 1973-1975. Ecodesign: Déprojet & Low-Tech, Toulouse, IsdaT éditions, Les Presses du réel, 2023. Credit: Institut supérieur des arts et du design de Toulouse.
Double page spread from the book by Nathalie Bruyère, Catherine Geels, Victor Petit (eds.), Global Tools, 1973-1975. Ecodesign: Déprojet & Low-Tech, Toulouse, IsdaT éditions, Les Presses du réel, 2023. Credit: Institut supérieur des arts et du design de Toulouse.
French translation (2010) of Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth (1969), one of Richard Buckminster Fuller’s most famous books, in which he presents a synthesis of his environmental and global design, in complete opposition to milieux-oriented design. Credit : Lars Müller Publishers
Spaceship Earth, 1982. Edition of the Fuller Dymaxion Sky – Ocean World. Publishers: Buckminster Fuller Institute. Philadelphia ; Crédit. David Rumsey Map Collection, list no 12089.000. Creative CommonsAttribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported
Double page spread from the book by Nathalie Bruyère, Catherine Geels, Victor Petit (eds.), Global Tools, 1973-1975. Ecodesign: Déprojet & Low-Tech, Toulouse, IsdaT éditions, Les Presses du réel, 2023. Credit: Institut supérieur des arts et du design de Toulouse. Double page spread from the book by Nathalie Bruyère, Catherine Geels, Victor Petit (eds.), Global Tools, 1973-1975. Ecodesign: Déprojet & Low-Tech, Toulouse, IsdaT éditions, Les Presses du réel, 2023. Credit: Institut supérieur des arts et du design de Toulouse. French translation (2010) of Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth (1969), one of Richard Buckminster Fuller’s most famous books, in which he presents a synthesis of his environmental and global design, in complete opposition to milieux-oriented design. Credit : Lars Müller PublishersSpaceship Earth, 1982. Edition of the Fuller Dymaxion Sky – Ocean World. Publishers: Buckminster Fuller Institute. Philadelphia ; Crédit. David Rumsey Map Collection, list no 12089.000. Creative CommonsAttribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported
BIOGRAPHIES
Victor Petit is a teacher-researcher at the Université de Technologie de Troyes. His research interests lie at the crossroads of the philosophy of ecology and the philosophy of technology, with a focus on ‘milieux-oriented design’. He is also interested in the history of eco-design and has contributed to the re-edition of Global Tools, 1973-1975 (ed. IsdaT, 2023).
Sophie Dars (France, 1983) and Carlo Menon (Italy, 1981) collaborate on a practice situated between research, publishing, pedagogy and project fabrication. Co-founders of the magazine Accattone, they teach design at the La Cambre Horta Faculty of Architecture (ULB, Brussels) and representation in the Civic Design Master’s program at PBSA Düsseldorf. In addition, Sophie Dars regularly takes part in built projects, in association with architects and artists such as Central, Piovenefabi, Pierre Leguillon and Simon Boudvin, while Carlo Menon pursues theoretical and critical writing projects, in connection with his doctoral thesis at the Bartlett School of Architecture (UCL London).
