Can urban greening come to the rescue of life in cities?
The summer of 2022 has sadly left its mark on the history of France. Some people see it as the clear consequences, others hear alarm bells ringing... With an unprecedented drought, repeated dramatic fires and record temperatures, France, like other countries around the world, is overheating! This fact highlights the vital and indeed health-giving role played by urban greening.
“De-gendering” cities: a new criterion of attractiveness?
Cities are made by men and for men: they have historically been planned and designed to reflect the traditional role of the male gender. This is a considerable problem since all genders should have equity in sharing the public space.
Building schools in modular wood
Interview with Marina Da Silva Carvalhais, R&D projects and Wood Construction Innovations (WeWood).
Flax: A fibre of the future for construction?
Resistant, light, efficient, ecological… Flax is used in construction on land and even on the sea! In 2022, the Netherlands inaugurated the world’s first linen bridge. A navigator used it to build the hull of his boat… Can this plant material really meet the needs of urban construction?
Is digitalisation the key to building differently
Attracting talent, mitigating climate change, and improving productivity: These are the construction sector's three main challenges. BIM and various digital tools offer useful solutions, but these are not enough.
What if your sites were supplied via rivers instead of roads?
Faced with the current energy situation, we must urgently find alternative solutions that will enable us to change the ways we produce and transport our materials. Among the solutions considered, one of the priorities – particularly for the industrial sector – is to find means of transport that are more energy-efficient and less harmful to local residents. Focus on river transport.
New challenges in public space
Today, public spaces are facing new challenges – societal, environmental, political, technological and economic – and must deal with the uncertainty of a changing world. How can public spaces be designed to meet the various expectations of society while also being able to adapt to future developments?
Free public transport: issues and positions of the key players in the debate
The issue of free public transport was widely debated in France’s 2020 municipal elections. Its presence on the headlines of many campaign documents demonstrates the political, environmental and societal nature of the issue. Several issues arise from the implementation of such a public policy. We examine the positions of the key stakeholders in the debate.
How do you design green roofs?
Green roofs are on the up and up. And for good reason! They have many environmental, economic and social benefits. In addition to their aesthetic appeal, they can promote biodiversity, improve the insulation of buildings and retain rainwater. Recent research conducted by ecologists is improving our understanding of the conditions under which rooftop vegetation thrives and develops, and assessing the quality of ecosystem services provided by different types of roofs. We consider the factors behind the design choices for such ecosystems.
What kind of governance is appropriate for a convivial city?
At the request of Bouygues Construction and La République des Hyper Voisins, six students from the École Urbaine at Sciences Po Paris worked for nine months on creating conviviality in urban areas. The proposed exploration strategy is to create the conditions for conviviality by introducing a professionally-structured form of citizen action on a micro-local scale. Explore their recommendations for the forms of governance that are most conducive to the emergence of convivial spaces, based on eleven areas of investigation in France and Switzerland.
How do players in US construction innovate?
Interview with Viviane André, an analyst at Winnovation, a Bouygues Group subsidiary.
Should we build higher and higher to fight against land artificialisation?
The fight against urban sprawl and land artificialisation is a national priority that is pushing those in the building sector to look for solutions to make cities denser. One of these solutions is to build ever taller buildings. A controversial issue.
The French Towns Adopting Sustainable Construction Charters
Many towns and cities are looking for a way to remodel their urban planning to give them resilience in the face of climate issues. One such solution is to rally the stakeholders in an area - residents, companies and local authorities - to move towards housing solutions that are innovative, sustainable and accessible to all: that is the cited goal of the ‘sustainable construction charters’ emerging around France.
How much will the ecological transition cost the construction industry?
In the last segment of its sixth activity report, the GIEC specifies very clearly that on the economic level, the ecological transition will prove less expensive for the global economy than if we do nothing. Several sectors are highly exposed to this issue, in particular transport, energy and construction. But acting, how much will it cost? The subject is a complex one but initial estimates are starting to be seen.
Guide to Regreening Cities
Focus on planting initiatives to regreen cities including urban canopies to provide plant life without digging, planters with automatic watering or rainwater harvesting systems, “oasis” schoolyards, and urban mini-forests.
Tackling traffic congestion in cities
Tackling traffic congestion has always been a major challenge for local authorities. Many different approaches have been attempted, including adding lanes, removing lanes and multimodal transport.
Towards a more “ecosystemic” energy performance of buildings
Controlling energy consumption has become an environmental, social and economic necessity, due to the numerous impacts on the biosphere and society as a whole: climate change, depletion of natural resources, deterioration of health, etc.
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The Common Tower : A Technical First in France to Meet the Challenges of the Tour Alto !
Bouygues Bâtiment Ile-de-France, Parisian subsidiary of Bouygues Construction, is the first construction company in France to set up a common tower, which is on the Tour Alto construction site in La Défense.
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What are the expectations of the French public in terms of quality of life and ecological transition?
As the 3rd survey* carried out by the Observatory of Uses and Representations of Territories confirms, living in the city increasingly appears to be an oxymoron, and the desire to migrate is intensifying among the hyper-urban population. This is a powerful trend, and the pandemic seems to have accentuated the discontent, intensified the search for a new work/life balance, and even in certain cases to have created conditions that are more conducive to turning these desires into reality.
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Dancers to enhance the achievements in Ile de France
Discover, through the reference film of Bouygues Bâtiment Ile-de-France, all the constructions made by the teams: La Poste du Louvre, the Alto Tower, The Seine Musicale, The New Longchamp … and let yourself be carried away by the art of dance:
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What added value does AI bring to the construction, real estate and urban planning industries?
Artificial intelligence (AI) is changing the way industry professionals approach their day-to-day work. This is for good reason as the potential benefits of AI are numerous, from reducing costs to improved project quality and better management of resources. In which areas, however, is it already being used reliably? How can its use save time for professionals? Can AI and humans work together without making mistakes? What could be the benefits of using this type of tool? What better way to answer these questions than to interview an industry professional (Thiebault Clément, R&D Director at Bouygues Construction) and a form of artificial intelligence which has been in the news for several weeks (ChatGPT*).
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Energies of the future: what energy mix to achieve carbon neutrality by 2050?
In 2019, France set itself the target of achieving carbon neutrality by 2050. If we are going to meet this climate commitment, we need to speed up the country's decarbonisation and redefine the energy system, two-thirds of which still depends on fossil fuels. At a time when the country is launching consultations on the future French Strategy on Energy and Climate, which will serve as the national roadmap for achieving carbon neutrality in 2050 and adapting our society to the impacts of climate change, three projections performed by ADEME (the French agency for ecological transition), RTE (the French transmission system operator) and NégaWatt (a think tank) question the energies of our future.
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Focus on connected offices
Digitalisation is having an impact on all those who use our buildings. The real estate sector, which includes planning, major construction companies, marketing and services must adapt.
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In Helsinki, the “participatory” smart city
"The most functional smart city in the world. " Helsinki's ambition is a mighty one... but has real potential. The Finnish capital wants to align new technologies with usages suited to the lives of its residents.
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The construction material that reacts with CO2
In our town and cities, where vegetation is becoming increasingly scarce, how can we absorb carbon dioxide, claimed by scientists to be the number one cause of climate change? Imagine a material that could grow like trees by absorbing carbon dioxide!
