Christine Leconte pleads during the National Housing Conference for a major cross-cutting housing policy

Christine Leconte, who carries the voice of the 30.000 architects of France, defended during her speech the principle of a real paradigm shift in housing, starting from the observation that this essential subject suffers from a succession of crises (social , environmental, etc.) that have affected our living environments for decades.

At a time when 12 million of our fellow citizens are affected by poor housing (source: FAB, 2022), the CNOA pleads for an inter-ministerial policy promoting more links between all actors in the living environment and housing and which exploits the solutions offered by architectural creation.

For Christine Leconte: "The housing policy as we know it, with a dedicated Ministry, has not worked for several decades, we must take the issues together with a large Ministry of Housing and the Living Environment, which understands the cross-cutting nature of the subjects: housing, employment, mobility, etc. »

Among the positions defended more specifically during his intervention:

• In terms of urban policies, get out of the “easy city” and reestablish a link of advice between architect and elected official, in particular via the generalization of the “one Mayor, one architect” system. According to Christine Leconte: “We have long made the city easy, by spreading out, by extending outside the centres. Now we have to do things differently, with more complexity. To do this, we can draw inspiration from pioneering solutions that exist everywhere and show the way, with different set-ups of operations, resident cooperatives, etc. This requires political courage and pedagogy. This requires supporting local elected officials. We must allow them to have better engineering, better advice, a narrative for their city”.
• In terms of housing, systematically think about uses and take existing buildings into account in order to renovate them. For Christine Leconte, “We must stop focusing on urban forms and contrast individual houses and large complexes. It is necessary to work on the architectural typologies to guarantee residential routes. We must also anticipate the aging of the population, allow the elderly to stay in their neighborhood by offering them suitable housing”.

The challenge for the CNOA today is to make elected officials understand the concrete solutions offered by architectural creation in order to "repair the city": designing buildings that are more sober in terms of energy and materials, renovating with respect for heritage, reimagining based on what already exists, thinking about summer comfort in cities, etc.