Technical advice
We support communities towards sustainable, equitable and resilient ways of living.Our work is based on the diagnosis of local building cultures, field experience, research and innovation in order to limit the environmental impact of the building, preserve the built heritage and reinforce the autonomy of the populations.
Together with the local actors, we develop architectural solutions that are adapted to climate, social and cultural challenges. We support the local skills, we document the know-how, we value heritage and we contribute to the evolution of the legal frameworks for more responsible construction practices. This collaborative approach enables to co-design innovative responses to contemporary challenges such as access to housing, climate change or resource scarcity.
Dissemination / Trainings
Since its creation, CRAterre disseminates knowledges on local building cultures and its evolutions, combining pedagogical tools, practical workshops, exhibitions, professional trainings, publications and seminars. This diversity of dissemination methods enables to reach a large public in order to reinforce the skills and to inspire new practices.
Research
Our researches focus on in depth analysis of the building cultures in close collaboration with the local stakeholders in order to revitalize their assets of common sense and sobriety. Our work focuses as much on the organization of territories as on the properties of available materials and techniques, with the objective to apply these knowledges to contemporary architecture and to the improvement of the built environments.
Project approach
Our approach aims for a site-specific architecture. It is based on a diagnosis of the territory, in particular the study of the local building cultures, their actual dynamics and the future directions they seem to take. It establishes a coherence between concepts, methods and objectives while facilitating the active participation of the stakeholders – institutional, professional and of the community. It links practice, research and training, each continually improving the other. Designed in cooperation with the local actors, it reinforces the resilience and encourages accessible and reproducible projects.
Intervention methodology
The projects are developed following a methodology that has been approved by CRAterre since many years. It is based on a cycle of four complementary phases, repeated as many times as necessary to continuously improve the carried out actions and refine the answers provided to the populations. This iterative progression also helps to raise the level of skills of the local partners until they are fully autonomous in the management and evolution of the projects.
At the heart of this approach, the co-design with the local actors — inhabitants, authorities, civil society organisations, etc. — guarantees the relevance and the appropriation of solutions. In this way, the projects aim to maximise the profits for the communities, by favoring accessible and reproducible techniques that are adapted to their resources.
Regular monitoring, evaluation missions and surveys of the beneficiaries constitute essential elements for mesuring the impacts, adjusting the orientations and reinforce the resilience of the territories.
Innovation capabilities
Our approaches are intended to be innovative, creative, in order to provide relevant answers to often complex demands and issues coming from a constantly changing world with very different impacts depending on local, geographical or cultural characteristics.
CRAterre has developed new training models ranging from material handling to on-site training.
Its innovative and pluridisciplinary integration capacities are recognized and inspire numerous institutions all over the world. In this regard, large-scale projects, like Disaster recovery reconstruction in Haiti (ReparH), support to the structuring of the compressed earth blocks in Mayotte and Conservation of the immovable cultural heritage in Africa (Africa 2009), are exemplary.