Abstract
Post-pandemic, France is promoting new ways of inhabiting domestic space by learning from COVID. However, certain models have emerged from a slower transformation. We examine how do-it-yourself (DIY) work may indicate paradigm changes in French society. This essay describes the characteristics and changes in DIY across time in France based on the momentum created by social sciences in the 1970s. It explains how DIY is able to generate changes in people’s behaviour and thus offer possible new models for economy and production. However, to play a role in both twenty-first century housing and the contemporary city, action taken on matter must be spatially legitimised. Therefore, the historical role of homo faber and his workshop in the construction of la cite is discussed. Workshops allow transgression of current material culture led by the ideas of abundance and accumulation. Thus, DIY is viewed as a way of being in the world that allows the construction of new economic and productive models during an era of ecological transition.
Presenters
Ophelia MantzAssistant Professor and Director of the Material Research Collaborative, Gerald D.Hines College of Architecture and Design, University of Houston, Texas, United States
Details
Presentation Type
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session
Theme
2024 Special Focus—Asocial Forms: Reconfiguring Possibilities of Urban Space
KEYWORDS
WORKSHOP, DO-IT-YOURSELF, PRODUCTIVE UNIT, ECOLOGICAL TRANSITION, HOMO FABER
