OUR PROJECT
Watch this short video explaining GWILEN's challenges and perspectives. It was made on the occasion of the Breton Trophies of Sustainable Development 2022 for which GWILEN is a winner in the Company category!
To learn more about the origin of the project and its major issues, you can listen to Yann's interview on Hélène Aguilar's podcast, Où est le beau ? (Where is the beauty?) :
THE RESOURCE
Marine sediments accumulate in harbors and this accumulation is inevitable. Indeed, when the current slows down, the suspended particles settle on the bottom.
This happens downstream of the dams, but also in all the ports of the world. This material must be evacuated to ensure the proper functioning of the infrastructure.
This resource is available anywhere in the world, all along the coast, in all ports. Currently, 60% of the world's population lives within 60 km of the coast. In 2045, 75% of us will live in this coastal strip.
Developing this resource means allowing the local use of a resource that is already available.
THE CONSTRUCTION INDUSTRY
The construction industry is one of the most polluting industries. It accounts for 41% of global energy consumption, 23% of air pollution and 40% of global raw material consumption. Concrete is the most consumed material on Earth after water, but it is also the most polluting. Producing one ton of cement requires a firing at 1450°C: this releases 900kg of CO2 into the atmosphere. Producing one ton of bricks requires a firing at 1150°C and this releases 300kg of CO2. If alternative solutions exist, such as straw or raw earth for example, they are not adapted to the industrial nature of construction sites. There is now a need to find new building materials, adapted to large-scale production to meet the needs of a growing world population, but materials that are more environmentally friendly than those we use today.
Gwilen produces materials that are environmentally friendly, industrial, easy to work with, and made from a readily available resource.
THE DESIGNER, A GLOBAL THINKER
Architects and designers as thinkers of globalities, are the best equipped to think about the world of tomorrow. We no longer need an ecological transition, but an ecological break. For this, we must be able to deconstruct what exists today in order to think it anew. To go back to the fundamental principles defining design, architecture, the construction sector or the industry, to approach them not in a restricted framework of their associated problems, but in a much broader way..
A more global vision, questioning the relationship between Man and the Earth.
DESIGN THE REUSE
Gwilen uses materials that are available to us, harbor sediments. Designing from these materials implies taking into account their compositions and their variability. This requires designing from already existing elements. This approach characterizes the Levi-Straussian "handyman", opposed to the figure of the "Engineer", who designs in autarky and submits nature to his thought. The 21st century will be a century of handymen, in the noble sense of the word, of the one who thinks "from", who thinks with waste, with what we have already extracted, with neglected architectures, with nature.
How to transform rather than create.
