Uploaded on 2015-06-14 by vlabrevo

[1]: https://edxuploads.s3.amazonaws.com/14343034653692184.jpg Construction has become more globalized both in terms of building techniques and in terms of materials. However in many cases construction and architecture defy common sense when for example high rise glass towers are built in the middle of the desert in Dubai when they are completely unadapted to such a climate. In many cases, the globalization of architecture defies reason and the construction traditions and techniques in place, built on centuries of empirical knowledge are lost. The city of Masdar in the United Arab Emirates is an answer to such absurdities: A city built for the future with the empirical knowledge brought from the past. However I do not live in a city where such pioneering projects are possible, where it is possible to build a city from nothing – I live in Europe and here we tend to make – in a different manner, new with old. This is photography of the new building of the catholic university of Lyon in construction. What is most interesting about this building is that is not entirely new. No, as in many other places in Europe architectural heritages are valued and restored and adapted to new roles. Here you can see that the building in question in the center of the picture is actually a new structure superposed on an older one: Lyon’s Saint Paul prison of which all the walls have been conserved. The left part of the building is however almost entirely new (it only covers part of the ex-prison). It is constructed in the globalized construction materials endemic to most construction sites. We see can that the building is made out of armed concrete, isolated by glass wool panels which are to be covered with metallic panels while large glass panels are to illuminate the interior of the building. France being a net importer of construction materials with a dying steel industry. It is therefore safe to say that most of these materials are imports. The architectural style of the northern wing of the faculty is a globalized one, only the conservation of the prison walls gives the faculty a distinctive identity. I will then say that if every building is destined to contain a component of the globalized economy, it is not a reason for which architecture must loose its regional styles and character and destroy the physical architectural heritage of the past.