According to the philosopher and researcher Baptiste Morizot, the ecological crisis must be conceived in terms of a “crisis of sensitivity”. He invites us to rethink our relationship to the living world and its stimuli (Manière être vivant, Actes Sud, 2020). Although we inhabit a built environment we tend to underestimate and neglect the complexity of living species that inhabit them as well.

Certain traditional typologies, architectural inexactitudes, or interstices of our aging constructions, have long offered an appropriate shelter for multiple organisms. The old walls host often rare flora and fauna which represent not only a historical and cultural but also an ecological heritage. Today, the processes of transformation and renewal of the urban fabric, driven by market interests, lead to the disappearance of shelters and the restraint of biodiversity. In most cases, cities are evolving without inquiries and keeping a prudential distance between humans and the rest of forms of life.
Following this observation, “towards an Ecology of shelter” wishes to launch the research on how habitat and dwelling could be affected and how they could trigger possible transformations of constructive and architectural paradigms. We find it essential to propose experimental initiatives towards the climatic challenges of our times, which open new ways of re-empowerment of cities threading new alliances with all living beings with whom we share the world.

A metal structure is implemented on the façade of a modernist building initiates a process of strategic actions, oriented by experts and researchers. The device expands one of the windows in the search of connecting the inside and the outside. The architectural element is conceived as a prototype which opens up new ways of how to envision the city of tomorrow in terms of tectonics and in its relationship with the environment.