François Roche / R&Sie(n)

François Roche (b. 1961, Paris) is the co-founder of the architects’ collective R&Sie(n) – which reads as ‘hérésie’ (heresy) in French – with which he developed numerous experimental architectural projects between 1989 and 2010. In deliberately utopian fashion, Roche and his partners look for methods of innovation that depart from conventional paths. I’ve Heard About (2005) is one of the central projects in their research. As an urbanist project, it is a purely utopian dream – an interactive, self-sufficient growth project of individually designed tower blocks, created using an apparatus controlled by a generative algorithm that shapes fibre-reinforced gunned concrete into stable habitats of organic appearance. A main focus here is on the democratic reconciliation of collective and individual interests. In a permanent process of exchange supported by an open-source building programme, this leads to an adaptable society and an architecture that is constantly changing. These models represent ideas for future worlds and for novel applications of new technological processes.