The Aim of the lesson is the study of materials and construction materials used in architecture through the experimentation of the construction of prototypes in scale 1:1.

For the academic year 2013-2014, the material studied belongs to the Ultra High Performance Concrete family (for example DUCTAL@ Lafarge).

The course is organised in 4 periods :

• Lectures on the UHPC performances and the ways that they have been used all around the word by several architects and engineers.
• Prototype desgin : students will be asked to design a project using this material exploring all its dimensions : mecanicals, functionnals, estheticals and symbolicals ones.
• construction of the prototype : students will experiment material by building a prototype of their design project using the UHPC (small-scale object like panels, cubes seats, etc).
• Evaluation of the prototype: finally, the prototypes will be evaluated by the students themselves depending on their initial assumptions.

Students will be evaluated on 2 works

• one personnal that will focus on one project using UHPC. They will present it and discuss it in front of the classe room.
• one by group that is the design and small scale building project.