Expérimenter les ambiances sous-marines par l’architecture ?

Abstract

How to experiment the possibility of living at the bottom of the sea by taking advantage of the resources of architecture ? The article compares different ways of experimenting the atmospheres encountered in the underwater world, based on a research on underwater houses made between the early 1960s and the mid-1980s. The first part provides an overview of the challenges of colonization of the ocean floor to examine the motivations behind different approaches of underwater habitat experimentation, whether they are technical or architectural. The second part examines the story of one of the pioneers, Robert Sténuit, of his stay in the first submarine house immersed by Edwin Link in 1962. The third part analyzes the scenography of the atmospheres of a submarine village, with a very meticulous design and architecture, that Jacques-Yves Cousteau immersed and filmed in 1963. The last part of this article describes the approach of architect Jacques Rougerie, from his research of the founding principles of an underwater architecture to his first underwater houses claiming an attention to the atmospheres produced by this environment.

Keywords

• sociology of architecture
• underwater habitat
• underwater exploration
• underwater architecture
• extreme environment