Philippe Madec, Dominique Gauzin-Müller and Alain Bornarel make the case for frugality

The architect and urban planner Philippe Madec, together with the architect Dominique Gauzin Muller and the engineer Alain Bornarel, has just launched a "manifesto for a happy frugality". It has already attracted close to 500 signatories from the building and spatial planning professions. You can sign it, either as an individual or on behalf of an organisation, by sending an email to contact@frugalite.org giving your first name and surname, your profession and your email address.

If frugality is a subject that interests you, here is a book I can recommend: Innovation Jugaad. Redevenons ingénieux ! (Jugaad Innovation), by Navi Radjou, Jaideep Prabhu and Simone Ahuja, with a preface by Carlos Ghosn (CEO of Renault-Nissan).

Here is the manifesto in full:

Time is running out

Alarm bells are ringing everywhere. The IPCC reports confirm that humans are responsible for global climate disruption. More than 15,000 scientists state that "soon it will be too late to change course from our failing trajectory, and time is running out". The UN laments that greenhouse gas emissions are stuck at 52 Gt a year, when they would need to be limited to 36, or even 24, to stay below the 2°C threshold that would allow a peaceful future. COP 23 has displayed its powerlessness: the commitments made at COP 21, two years ago, lead to a rise of more than 3 to 3.5°C. But let us stay optimistic; there is still time: "We have three years to act", warn Jean Jouzel and Pierre Larrouturou.

Threats are mounting

Beyond the climate change caused by greenhouse gas emissions, threats are mounting: accelerating loss of biodiversity; the dwindling of finite resources; increasing pollution of air, land and sea; growing inequality in the distribution of wealth and in the impacts of global disruption... Controlling energy use alone will not be enough.

Words and deeds

Do national policy choices measure up to what is at stake? Successive governments announce initiatives that they end up postponing. Thus the target of 50% nuclear power in the electricity mix has been put off indefinitely, undermining the growth of renewable energy for many years to come. Since the financial crisis of 2008, the environment is no longer the central goal it was at the start of this century. The scaling back of commitments, as with the RT 2012 building regulations, the announcement of measures with a notoriously inadequate budget, as with the energy retrofit of existing buildings, and the undermining of funding for social housing all bear this out, and are cause for concern.

An obsolete model of development

Why refuse to see the future? Are we forever caught in the trap of a blind model of development? How can we promote ever greater production of goods without seeing the depletion of resources and the planet's disruption? How can we favour the prosperity of finance without seeing inequality swell and our debt to nature grow? How can we prefer selfish competition without seeing solidarity wither and generosity stifled? This outdated model of development is paralysing the ecological and societal transition.

The good news

But the world is changing, and the seeds of what is possible are sprouting across the planet. Farming that cares for people and nature is moving out of the margins, and short supply chains are growing. A cooperative, social and solidarity-based economy is taking hold outside the market sectors and those who proclaim themselves "collaborative". In people's minds, shared use is taking precedence over ownership, pooling over privatisation, sobriety over waste. A new world is being born.

The heavy share borne by builders
The building and spatial planning professions cannot shirk their responsibility. Their fields of activity account for at least 40% of greenhouse gas emissions in the case of buildings, and much more once the journeys generated by urban planning choices are included, such as the strong preference for new-build over refurbishment. These choices remove from agricultural use, every 10 years, an area of land equivalent to a French département. Collective and individual commitment is essential.

Frugality in energy

The building world is changing too. At the scale of the territory, Ademe has presented 165 project leaders working on local, participatory renewable energy production. At the scale of the building, people are constructing healthy, pleasant buildings without mechanical ventilation or air conditioning, and even without heating. Through natural ventilation, passive cooling, the recovery of free heat gains and thermal mass, bioclimatic design reduces energy consumption to the bare minimum while providing greater comfort. We know how to do this, and it costs no more. Why not make these practices the norm?

Frugality in materials

We know how to do without materials that squander resources. Timber construction, long confined to single-family houses, is now used for major public facilities and for housing blocks of more than 20 storeys. Bio-based insulation, marginal until recently, accounts for nearly 10% of the market and is growing by 10% a year. Raw earth, the material of our heritage, is emerging from the purgatory into which the 20th century had cast it. All these advances are strengthening the development of local supply chains and skills across the regions.

Frugality in technology

Frugality in energy, raw materials, upkeep and maintenance calls for low-tech approaches. This does not mean an absence of technology, but giving priority to techniques that are appropriate, well suited and neither polluting nor wasteful, as well as to equipment that is easy to repair, recycle and reuse. In construction as in design, frugality demands innovation, invention and collective intelligence. Frugality rejects the hegemony of a technocratic vision of the building and keeps occupants involved. It is not the building that is smart, it is its inhabitants.

Frugality for the territory

Whether in an urban or a rural setting, the frugal building is mindful of its context. It acknowledges cultures and places, and draws its inspiration from them. It uses land and local resources with care; it respects air, soil, water, biodiversity and more. It is generous towards its territory and attentive to its inhabitants. Through its brief and its construction choices, it favours everything that lightens its ecological footprint, and everything that makes it fair and pleasant to live in.

For frugality

The ecological transition and the fight against climate change call for the prudent use of finite resources and the preservation of biological and cultural diversity, for a planet that is better to live on. Maintaining yesterday's architectural, urban and technical solutions, along with current ways of living, working, eating and getting around, is incompatible with the task that falls to our generations: to contain, and then eradicate, global disruption.

The frugal building and the frugal territory, urban or rural, are the answers we have chosen. We share them in our teaching, our talks and our publications. We put them into practice in our projects, to help bring about a happy and eco-responsible society.

Alain Bornarel (engineer), Dominique Gauzin-Müller (architect), Philippe Madec (architect and urban planner)

To sign, or for any enquiries, send an email to contact@frugalite.org, stating: surname/first name/profession/email address