photographist

“I used to take my dolls apart instead of playing with them! My first memory of a pile of jumbled pieces goes back to when I was around four and entirely dismantled my father’s razor. Throughout my life I have continued to dismantle and reassemble just about everything I could find – being a good engineer who wants to resolve problems and make things work. This need to understand things led me to the École Normale Supérieure, where I spent four absolutely fantastic years doing physics before going to the École des Ponts et Chaussées. I have subsequently leaned more and more towards management positions. If you want to find solutions that are somewhat original and quicker, you often have to stand back to look at problems, because otherwise you can’t see the wood for the trees. My reflexes as a physicist are useful in trying to verify the consistency of things. I am currently running a public research establishment, which I find absolutely wonderful.

When concrete is used badly, it is grey and ugly! But it is more the fault of the mould rather than the material. We now know how to make concrete with very little cement, but we also know how to recarbonate concrete from demolition sites so that it can be reused in new concrete. Instead of rebuilding a town on top of the old town, we can rebuild the town using the town. Ten million tons of demolition concrete are removed from Paris every year, while eleven million tons of fresh concrete are brought in. At Ifsttar, we mainly deal with transport, civil engineering infrastructures and mobility; we are researching how we can improve the construction techniques used for housing, roads, railways, etc., but also how to perfect locomotion systems. We are trying to think about a more durable form of mobility, infrastructures that cause less pollution and are better integrated in the landscape, and also how to improve road safety.”

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