To remedy the lack of qualified labor in construction, the government just had to think about it: by cutting back on the duration of training, that’s it. At most it is enough to reassure, by affirming that the quality will not be affected…
For lack of having known how to get its feet out of trouble, the State is reduced, once again, to offering such privileges. As long as the general planning of social necessities is so lacking, will we really find ourselves better equipped to build a new world?
At a time when the sad observation of the expansion of the housing crisis and the resulting homelessness arises, the powerful of this world continue cheerfully to divert their butter abroad. Nearly 22 billion dollars, pumped out of our pockets by local companies, have been transferred to Luxembourg in ten years. Yet we continue to be made to believe that everyone is the master of their destiny while the rug is pulled out from under our feet. Such embezzled sums make the “ecological transition” a pretty fable that goes around in circles, just good enough to flatter the beautiful souls of the elite who benefit from it.
In this context, the calls for beauty, launched from the top of chic, smooth and refined houses of the type designed by the architect Pierre Thibault, are enough to make you smile. You know these buildings that the filmmaker Denys Arcand, in The reign of beautyputs in binary opposition with all the Taschereau and Hamel boulevards on earth?
The question of this beauty comes back to the fore in the pages of a book of interviews by the architect Pierre Thibault with Catherine Perrin. In Living in beautythe host, writer and musician writes to us, between two stays in Paris, between a “literary tea” and a café conversation, to give us her thoughts with the architect.
She met him, if I understood correctly, behind a microphone on our tax radio station. It was at the time when Thibault, in the company of a physical education teacher and a cook, was entrusted, by one of our distraught governments, with the task of rethinking school buildings, failing to agree firstly that we must rebuild education itself.
Between Pierre Thibault and Catherine Perrin, the flow goes well. That they attended the same school, in the same neighborhood, while subsequently belonging more or less to the same social world, will surprise no one.
It’s hard to deny that money is a powerful binder when it comes to beauty. However, there is never really any question in these pages of the striking gulf that exists between the general social environment and this world of money, which is moreover quite often that of culture, the two regularly going hand in hand. However, is it not this discrepancy, this acceleration of the social downgrading of some to the benefit of the superpower of others, which increasingly leads to the ugliness of all the Taschereau and Hamel boulevards of the world?
Welcome to Jonathan. His Montreal house, designed by Thibault, is located in the heart of the Plateau. Nothing to do with the old workers’ houses in this neighborhood reinvested by a trendy society. Here is a large house, with a “fresh butter-colored” brick facade, with a “chestnut wood lattice”, as Catherine Perrin writes. Is this really the Montreal of tomorrow?
Jonathan planned to build another residence, according to plans by the same architect. This was when he owned “a pickup, a sports car, a boat, a cottage.” A separation and a new relationship redirected him. Does he have any advice for staying in the realm of beauty? This man, who intends to “become a leader in sustainable finance”, notes in any case “that the financial aspect is not a pressure”. So have the means not to count too much. This will allow you, like him, to have your “custom” furniture designed and manufactured.
Jonathan’s office overlooked a neighbor’s wall. He didn’t like this wall. “With their permission, we redid part of the very visible exterior covering of my office to make it cleaner and lighter. » The wood for the house, heated in part by a gas fireplace, comes “from the supplier of the Maison symphonique”. And the grand staircase is signed by a very chic specialist designer with an Italian name. In the heart of the Plateau, with “a Japanese step” in the garden, you access another world. And all this is well preserved for the future thanks to “a Berlin wall”.
Jonathan read The transition is now, by Laure Waridel. “Degrowth” challenges him. Which doesn’t stop him from talking about his “two heat pumps”, his “gym”, his “patio doors”, the “oak frame that runs from one room to another”, of the “eight boreholes” necessary “to install geothermal energy”. Enough, undoubtedly, to contribute to “a happy form of degrowth and to counter environmental threats”.
We are welcomed, in the rest of the book, at Laure Waridel’s house. She turns out to be busy building a huge house for herself and her lawyer partner, not far from another older house, left aside. Once renovated, the latter will serve as a welcome pavilion for its guests. Laure Waridel sat on a board of directors with Pierre Thibault. She asked him to design her house.
Its windows are triple thickness. They come from Poland. There are sliding doors. A grand piano. Skylights. Insulation is provided by post-consumer materials. The gypsum for the walls, you should know, contains 14% recycled material. During the work, large recycling bins were installed. Consumption, after all, appears more than ever to be soluble in the promises of recycling.
How pleasant it must be, with a cup of fair trade coffee, to contemplate all this beauty, to find oneself satisfied and happy, in a peaceful space, far from the dictates of merchandise and money.