The PFE “Building urbanity in an area exposed to natural hazards
102 graduates / 52 projects

This end-of-study project (PFE) educational program was initiated at L’Ensa Paris-la Villette in 2012 by Éric Daniel-Lacombe, its manager.

Echoing the achievements of his agency EDL architecture (from the resilient Matra district in 2008 to the development of the valleys of Nice in 2020…), Éric Daniel-Lacombe (EDL) realized that the complexity and urgency of such issues were not being addressed in architecture schools. Given the growing scale of climate and environmental disruption, it seemed essential that future architects should be able to grasp these issues during their training. Architects have limited means at their disposal to take part in such a program, but they wish to participate in the invention of this new architecture made necessary by climate change and the deterioration of our relationship with other living species (the Anthropocene).

These graduation projects propose transformations based primarily on prevention and the promotion of natural regulations; they also aim to establish new links between architecture, landscape, urbanity and risk, revealing the double imaginary of open shelters, built between defensive withdrawal and openness to the richness of living environments.

In semester S 9 of Master 2, Éric Daniel-Lacombe has been joined since 2017 by Yannick Gourvil, In semester S 10 of Master 2, Éric Daniel-Lacombe has been joined since 2015 by Xavier Bonnaud, who since 2022 has been replaced by Séverine Roussel.

The Anthropocene is a new era in Earth’s history, marked by a new and progressive awareness of the life-destroying effects of our collective consumption of natural resources.