During the workshop “A Culture of Reusing” in France, we screened a short film about the Collectif Etc. Through discussions about living and working, we were able to engage with the students about the collective practices associated with architectural collectives. For several years now, students have been questioning the practices of collectives, which are both highly present in their discourse and desires but also not very well understood. This led to a lively debate about the “cool wave” of collectives in the 2010s, their real impact on the fields of architecture and urbanism, their political commitments and values, their similarities to more conventional architectural practices, and sometimes the social or greenwashing that these practices can entail.
We were thus able to discuss with the students the practice of Collectif Etc and, by extension, other collectives. It is a challenge for us to show that there are alternative ways of practicing architecture, that the work does not have to follow the traditional path of an agency, and that one can also invent their own activity or join movements that take alternative paths.
Here the recording of the students feedbacks (FR version)
