Health
For more articles on similar topics, see the 06/2024 issue of A&B - HEALTH,
from which we publish the article below. Download free e-issues of A&B and read more.
According to French architect Nadia Sahmi, it is on satisfying the need for nature, beauty, contact with others and the needs that change with human age that the construction of the quality of life of the human individual should be based. "Even if what is regenerative for one may be tiring for another, the point is not,
to ban it or punish someone, but to make room for everyone," - says the architecture accessibility consultant. Founder of the Cogito Ergo Sum agency and creator of the Us-Âges approach, she explains how a senior citizen's home can become a real living environment, an urban park a place for spontaneous encounters and positive relationships - how a curved line in an architectural drawing make cohabitation in the city more peaceful.
Dorota Bielawska: It is the human being who is at the center of your interests as an architect.
Nadia Sahmi:Yes, man is at the center of my reflections, he should be at the heart of all subjects. It has always been my dream to start a meeting with my fellow architects - from design offices, everyone, whether it is about landscape, materials, air quality, resilience - by gathering around a table, grabbing hands, taking a deep breath and saying to ourselves that it is the human being who is the focus of our actions. I'm sure we would plan architecture differently from that point on. We would draw the landscape, streets, cities, parks, gardens, buildings, apartments and bedrooms differently - from the macro scale to the tea spoon!
Eco-friendly, intergenerational urban gardens in Park de la Villette in Paris, adapted to the needs of children, as well as residents who are aging, sitting, standing or in a wheelchair - proj.: Champ Libre, project assistant: Us-Âges
Illustrations provided courtesy of Nadia Sahmi
Dorota Bielawska: Today it doesn't quite look like that.
Nadia Sahmi:Today it's about functionality: it has to work. It's about being able to sit down, to eat, to be able to take the bus, to be transported, to run, to walk the dog. But these are all functions. It's not something that drives us as people. It's not what makes us a person who smiles - or invites us to smile when we just want to cry. Architecture - and behind the word architecture, I see territorial development, from a small sector of artisan chair-making, to a building, a place for trees and birds, water, air, sun, earth - architecture is what makes us emotional. It's what makes individuals live in peace or at war.
Eco-friendly, intergenerational urban gardens in the Park de la Villette in Paris, adapted to the needs of children, as well as residents who are aging, sitting, standing or in a wheelchair - proj.: Champ Libre, project assistant: Us-Âges
Illustrations provided courtesy of Nadia Sahmi
Dorota Bielawska: You often talk about architecture as a design of connectedness that breaks isolation and proposes solutions that include people in the action.
Nadia Sahmi:We have a responsibility, a very big responsibility - planners, architects, thinkers, politicians, decision-makers - we are responsible for what we design. Because what we draw generates attitudes and behavior, makes us angry or, on the contrary, makes us feel respected, makes us respect others, makes us feel like taking someone in our arms or rejecting them, makes us look into each other's eyes or avoid each other. Human beings live in a completely different way when they are in a space where they feel bad. As builders, we are as much responsible as social workers for the mental and emotional health of the residents, their relationships with each other, their relationships with nature, animals. And it is in this area that we are far behind in the industry.
Street salon in the agglomeration of Pau Béarn, Pyrenees, New Aquitaine, France - project assistant: Us-Âges
Illustrations provided courtesy of Nadia Sahmi
Dorota Bielawska: You mean?
Nadia Sahmi:We are still creating separate ministries, proposing separate activities. A typical example: we create budget lines for young people, for students, for teenagers, for children, for the elderly - we systematically divide people by age, by gender, we pigeonhole the rich, the poor, nature, the city. Whenever an animal shows up in the city, it creates a buzz on the Internet, although it shouldn't be anything special. We have lost what could be called living together, in peace. It's true that in the post-war period we built quickly, because we needed housing quickly. We can clearly see that when it comes to the construction of housing estates in those days, we mostly deal with straight lines, rectangular forms, it's mostly efficient architecture, functional multi-family buildings, blocks of flats. But this is where we have lost all sensitivity, subtlety, that is, we have not respected the human being, who also has other basic needs, not just eating and drinking, and in addition to breathing also feels, looks, touches. Society and architecture must organize those places where we look at each other, where we touch each other with our eyes, if we don't want to touch each other physically, we touch each other with words, simply saying "thank you" to each other.
sub-par, Louis-Vuitton Foundation building, Paris - design: Frank Gehry, project consultancy: Us-Âges
Illustrations provided courtesy of Nadia Sahmi
Dorota Bielawska: Indeed, there is a shortage of such places.
Nadia Sahmi:We hear often: there are parks for children. I can confirm that it is the parents who pick up their children from school and go with them after school to the small park next door that make up society today. This place exists. But is there more? Maybe there is still a cafe, a restaurant. But the latter are not places where we head spontaneously. It involves a whole process. What about when I don't feel like giving in to the process and going to a restaurant, because it costs money, I'm tired?
Dorota Bielawska: What can be done to change that?
Nadia Sahmi:Very small things are already important. And I am glad that they are starting to appear. Until now I had to convince: "You need to plant trees, under the trees you need places to sit." Today we are already thinking more often about planting trees, still not enough, but it is better. However, we stop putting benches. We are starting to replace them with chairs. Because a bench doesn't invite you to be part of society - it invites you to sit in a row. How do we make eye contact with the interlocutor while sitting on a bench? We are forced to twist with our whole body. And let's take three chairs spaced in a casual configuration, which makes a "living room" under the tree. If we add next to, or not too far away, a fountain, the possibility of a meeting appears, without mandatory consumption, without having to enter the system.
Samaritaine shopping center, lounge - proj.: renovation: SANAA, project assistant: Us-Âges
Illustrations provided courtesy of Nadia Sahmi
Dorota Bielawska: It's true that public spaces don't invite residents to stay longer.
Nadia Sahmi:It invites their paths to cross within a certain service. I'm a nurse, so I'll take care of this person, here in this place, and then I go home, I'm done. I don't call it living in the community, it's a service. And it can look different, I'll give the example of a retirement home in Switzerland. This is not a senior home as we know it, it's a place to live in old age. The living space was designed in the center of an office district. Imagine a neighborhood like La Défense [a business district located in the Paris metropolitan area - editor's note] or Wall Street, and in the midst of office buildings, with all the serious bankers, financiers in suits and ties, important meetings - in the middle of it all, a low-rise residential element and senior citizens walking around. Because it's true that what the latter need most during the day is to be able to see life. And this is where the design of tomorrow's society begins. I design it through the prism of walls, furniture, gardens, streets, I stop drawing straight lines where skateboards or bicycles will travel at crazy speeds - rather, I draw bold curves that will bring not only softness, but also the ability to share space. Because if bicycles reduce speed, pedestrians will stop being afraid. We all know how to live together, but we need to rearrange the space so that softness settles in and perpetuates. Even if what is restorative for one may be tiring for another, the point is not to ban it or punish someone, but to make space for everyone.
Samaritaine shopping center, relaxation lounge - proj.: renovation: SANAA, project assistant: Us-Âges
Illustrations provided courtesy of Nadia Sahmi
Dorota Bielawska: Your words put me in mind of Cynthia Fleury and Antoine Fenoglio's search for the "good life." According to the philosopher and designer, everyone has the right to silence, a view to the horizon, to be weak and to be cared for. In their book "Ce qui ne peut être volé" (That which no one can steal from us), they pause over the word "build," which originally meant "to dwell," "to stay," "to remain." This confirms that the human factor has always been at the center of architecture, but has been left behind somewhere.
Nadia Sahmi:I completely agree with this. The right to silence is something I am working on tremendously. It's about the right to silence chosen by us, not one we have to endure. That's the whole difference. In my opinion, human beings have four basic needs that we must respect. These are the need for goodness and beauty, the need for nature, and the need for another person. Without the other person and without his gaze, without his arm, without the noise he makes, I do not exist, I become depressed. We know that in France the population suffers from loneliness. And finally, the need to respect the human being in his multiformity. Our body takes on a different form in every season, including at different ages. With the passing of time, my desires change, I have different needs, expectations, even views. If these four dimensions are respected, then regardless of the project, whether it is a city hall, a house, a workplace, a park, a garden, a neighborhood or an entire city, a person feels good. And when I say that man is well, I assume that everything that lives is well, that insects find their place, plants. Because that's how we stay in line with ecosophy. Man becomes just an element of the great whole.
private apartment - project assistant: Us-Âges
Illustrations provided courtesy of Nadia Sahmi
Dorota Bielawska: That is, an inclusive city. But more than an inclusive city, you prefer to talk about a "solidarity" city.
Nadia Sahmi:Yes, I am leery of words like "inclusive" or "universal accessibility," because they have taken on technocratic and functional connotations. Their original meaning has been twisted again, so I am looking for new words - probably one day they too will be twisted, but I still have some time. Words like "alive" and "sensitive" make one work differently. When I studied architecture, we were all trained for functionality. I love the new generation, today's young people, because mostly they want to change everything, they want to work differently. They want to live differently, they want a different environment, they don't want to fit into the mold we created in the past. That in itself is already a victory. I like to take care of people's mental and physical well-being. Whenever I had a topic to work on during my studies, I directed all my attention to making sure that the person sitting on the sofa in his apartment could have a view of the outdoors, so that hecould see something pleasant from that point, so that each evening she would be happy to come home and know that she could sit in that spot, facing the window from which she would see it. It could be a perspective, a tree, a detail that will bring respite after all that may have happened during the day.
Stair railings for all users at the Louis-Vuitton Foundation, Paris - proj.: Frank Gehry, design consultancy: Us-Âges
Illustrations provided courtesy of Nadia Sahmi
Dorota Bielawska: We are returning to the human being in architecture.
Nadia Sahmi:To that which is living. To reckon with what is living is a lot of empathy and listening. It's like being a mother. And what gives a mother more pleasure than a child who laughs, a child who finds his place in the world? What spurs me on are small joys, I feel despair at the sight of a slab of concrete, an asphalt slab. We have square kilometers of shopping mall roofs, square kilometers of parking lots, but instead of installing photovoltaic panels on the surface of these parking lots and roofs, we prefer to cut down the forest and put the panels there. To do better - in quotes - we first destroy. We are told that the idea was to do better, but where is the better? And we could have done it right by not destroying.
Dorota Bielawska: How do you reconcile the sustainable development you propose with the permanent transformation of the city and society?
Nadia Sahmi:I say to myself: it has happened, at last. I am very happy, the right time has come. Society is no longer static. Codes are starting to be deconstructed. We are on the move. We are entering this generation that is designing the spring of tomorrow. We are forming this group of actors who are in the process of designing the world of tomorrow, which comes from the world of yesterday. We are trying to fix dozens of things and solve the problems we inherited from previous eras. This is not a criticism. We had to go through a certain number of experiences to realize and say: this is good, this is not good, this we will stop, and this we will stop doing. Our biggest enemy is habits, and unfortunately changing them will not always be easy. But resistance is natural.
Stair railings for all users at the Louis-Vuitton Foundation, Paris - proj.: Frank Gehry, project consultancy: Us-Âges
Illustrations provided courtesy of Nadia Sahmi
Dorota Bielawska: What does it look like in working with your clients?
Nadia Sahmi:It depends on the clients. First of all, I prefer to talk about a person rather than a client, because he is a person first of all. Depending on his sensitivity, on his ability to listen, on his ability to hear or not what I want to share with him, I can achieve more or less. If I can add a grain of salt, I have already won. Ten years later, I'll meet that person again and see that from that grain of salt a whole salt shaker has been made, because the person has matured on a topic he or she was once not ready for.
Dorota Bielawska: Thank you for the interview.
