13-05-2020
Architecture, the pandemic and the future of design: Tectône Architectes
In only a few months, everything has changed completely. Even the world of architecture. In search of possible new scenarios, Floornature opens the discussion of a new approach to design for a time of public health emergency, publishing a series of interviews with architects all over the world.
How are the big studios organising their work, and what has been the impact of the current situation on smaller architectural practices?
What does it mean to design infrastructure, cultural centres and living spaces while avoiding social contact?
Might the resilience we seek in buildings also be applicable to the profession of architect?
Here are the architects’ responses, some in text form and others in videos, in the usual style of our portal.
1. How did your firm handle the lockdown?
Tectône activity has been heavily impacted by the lockdown. The blow is hard, most projects are stopped (construction sites AND studies). We focus on the few projects that are carrying on, and we started an architectural competition.
We are an eight people studio, most of us don’t work because of the lack of occupation.
2. What new forms of work are you experimenting with and how about the results?
For the few of us that still have work we work form home. We connected all of our home computers to the studio server via a VPN. Moreover our mail, is a web mail so we can access it from anywhere, we work on ArchiCAD so our files are on the cloud. These features enable us to work from home (or actually anywhere) as if we were at the studio.
The main charge is on the studio associates, that have to coordinate the employees by phone or zoom, each of us does one phone or zoom meeting a day with them.
The main difficulty we encounter is that we very much work as a team, not been in the same room is a huge difficulty, a zoom meeting will never be able to emulate that.
3. How do you think this experience will affect the future management of an architectural practice?
Working from home is now possible, it is not optimal but possible. I think tectône will enable its employees to sometimes work from home, but as a studio that functions as a team we cant durably work away from each other.
