BEYOND WORDS

Vincent Callebaut defines himself as an archibiotect , a neologism combining architecture, biotechnology and information, and communication technologies. Famous for its eco-neighbourhoods futuristic, he imagines biomimetic, vegetable and sustainable cities capable of coping with disasters to welcome a more resilient civilisation. SUEZ went to meet this visionary who is seeking to reconcile the human being with his ecosystem.

Repairing the climate and regenerating ecosystems

In a society undergoing a deep-seated revolution that is looking to reinvent itself, I keep thinking that the sustainable reappropriation of the world consists of transforming towns and cities into ecosystems, neighbourhoods into forests and buildings into inhabited trees. I dream of fixing the climatic machinery and of imagining resilient urban planning that could restore the balanced symbiosis between human beings and their environment.

In contrast with our energy-consuming civilisation built on a linear economy that

extracts limited resources from a finite territory, that produces and consumes on a massive scale while generating debt, pollution and endless waste, my architectural philosophy is to design urban systems that use a circular economy. A circular economy where everything we produce and consume is recycled in closed loops, using exclusively renewable energy sources.

This new regenerative economy is bio- inspired by the symbiosis that exists in the heart of the Amazonian forest. This mature ecosystem does not produce any pollution or waste that is not considered as a natural and reusable resource. Moreover, the Amazonian forest mainly uses natural

global resilience

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