ARCHITECTURES SANS ARCHITECTES

One who has a reflection about rural architecture today, can only be aware of two things. On one hand, the important number of disappearances, degradations and abandonment that have impoverished this patrimony and that continues to do so. For it is really a matter of true significant patrimony. Besides Chateaux and large Churches there are also houses. To know of them is also to complete our Chart of the Past. On the other hand after the excesses of modernisation, after the neglect of traditions, we are searching once more to know « from where we come ». This need for a past goes towards the research and tracks of this part of our history that forms a rural world. To rediscover this through these buildings, even modest ones, can only enrich our perception of the space and shape which they occupy. Complementary to the research work and publication made by the team of ARTW, this series of ten short films has been made like a journey through the actual conditions and state of rural architecture in Wallonie, from Tournaisis to the Herve country and from the Hesbaye to the Gaume. Voluntarily, we have avoided the picturesque and nostalgic evocation, as well as the exceptional or the spectacular. We have shown interest in that « Architecture without Architects » which is also called popular, indigenous, vernacular, spontaneous, unofficial, in one word towards the « Banal » or « Ordinary » Architecture which is pragmatic, exact and often beautiful.