By Flavien Menu

The Proto-Habitat is a demonstrator prototype of a different culture of living resulting from research initiated at the Villa Medici - Académie de France in Rome. It is a mobile, modular and ecological building that can be assembled in five days by three people and dismantled in three to be installed on another site. Proto-Habitat calls into question both the relationship to property and to the materials that constitute the built environment. It is a constructed experiment that questions the intangible factors of housing to promote eco-responsible ways of living, stimulate the collective imagination and prioritize the conditions of habitability over questions of production. The book Proto-Habitat retraces a reflection combining interviews, visits, paintings, objects, images and architecture exploring the imagination of our ways of existing as well as their means of production.