Public Spaces and Architecture as Manifestations of a Territory - Simon TeyssouUrban and Environmental Theory Sessions EPFL

How are built forms a manifestation of the environment in which they are embedded? By their morphologies, the assembly of their materials, their degrees of openness, their relationship to the landscape and ground, buildings and public spaces have the power to reveal the specificities of a territory. Through the presentation of several built projects carried out in the bio-region of the Massif Central in France, the session will deal with the local dimension of public spaces and buildings and with their capacity to carry out more global themes which animate the reflection of the Rouget workshop.

Architect & urban planner, Simon Teyssou was born in Paris in 1973 to an American mother and a French father. He spent his childhood in the Cantal, France, and in the United States, before studying architecture at Clermont-Ferrand and Aberdeen, Scotland. Graduated in 2000, he returned to the Cantal region and settled in Rouget, a town of one thousand inhabitants. Founded in 2000, the Rouget workshop now employs about twenty people and is based on transscalar and transdisciplinary thinking. The agency is concerned with soils, resources, the future of ruralities and small towns, uses, construction methods, economy of means and designs projects adapted to rural areas in France. He taught architectural design at the National School of Architecture in Clermont-Ferrand from 2004 to 2018 before becoming the director of the school. He has been an associate member of its “Resources” research laboratory since 2015, and was also the winner of the 2023 global award for sustainable architecture and « Le Grand Prix d’Urbanisme 2023 »