Starting May 24, the French Pavilion at the 19th Venice Architecture Biennale will present "Living with." This exhibition, presented by the Jakob + MacFarlane and Eric Daniel-Lacombe agencies, examines the role of architecture in the face of ecological challenges, conflicts, and global instability. This is an opportunity for the French Touch to question the notion of beauty in light of the dark reality of our times. To help us define its concept and understand how to implement this necessary evolution in times of crisis, we handed the microphone to Hélène Aguilar, instigator of "Where is beauty?", a podcast on engagement in architecture, design, materials, and botany (around 200 episodes), and co-founder of the Parisian biennale "Amour Vivant." The next edition in the fall of 2025 will present a selection of ecologically sustainable crafts, helping to usher in a new era for design and architecture. Let's follow her!

La French Touch: After a first career as a lawyer, you launched "Where is Beauty?", a podcast about the Art de vivre in the Anthropocene era. Then you co-founded the "Amour Vivant" biennial and, more recently, the "Cosmos & Matter. The New Normal" experience. How did it all begin?

Helen Aguilar: The podcast was born out of an existential crisis that made me realize that what made me deeply joyful simply stemmed from the question of "beauty." This questioning led me to explore topics I knew little about at the time but that fascinated me: design, architecture, and craftsmanship. I launched my podcast in 2019. At the time, podcasting was still an emerging universe. The "signature question" I ask each podcast guest: "What does beauty represent for you?" Through my interviews, I learned that the choice of materials, whether for our objects, our interiors, or homes, has an immense impact on our environment. Every creator has real power in the world, because the materials they choose profoundly affect our environment and, by extension, the way we interact with it. This realization revealed the enormous challenge we face: we live in a world with limited resources, and our notion of beauty will have to adapt to this reality. Our intimate relationship with beauty is also impacted. Faced with the eco-anxiety that ran through me, I understood that we were experiencing a sort of silent revolution, where the tastes, preferences, and practices of creators would change. Just like those of aesthetes. An awakening, almost systemic, would occur, especially among young creators who, influenced by questions of sustainability and impact, began to seek more aligned solutions, thus moving away from the consumption and production model that had until then been the benchmark. It's an exciting adventure, because I see a new generation of creatives who want to be part of the solution, by creating a "beauty" that respects the biosphere. The podcast, despite its success, has limitations, because it doesn't allow the public to reach out. I had the idea of ​​creating another format, a biennial that would allow the general public to become aware of materials, beauty, and sustainability. This is how "Frugal" and then "Amour Vivant" (the next edition of which will take place in the fall in Paris) were born in 2021. Because, in the end, everyone, whether informed or not, finds themselves faced with this paradox: we create a "beauty" that could destroy us. But I remain optimistic, convinced that by dint of sharing role models, our tastes will gradually evolve. It is an essential adventure, because, to change our relationship with the world, we must first change our way of conceiving "beauty." And this transformation is underway, slowly but surely.

La FT: In recent years, we've seen living things occupy an increasingly important place in creative disciplines. How is this movement taking shape in the Art de vivre and design?

HA: HA: I would answer with an experience I had that reinforced my idea that the opposite of beauty is not ugliness, but the perversion of beauty. Beauty, as the system promotes it today, creates the illusion of infinite abundance, but, in reality, it generates scarcity and disconnection from life. In 2020, I initiated an exhibition called "Tomorrow More Beautiful" with the complicity of the Salon Maison & Objet. This exhibition only showed materials without plastic, with a scenography 100% gathered: raw earth, bamboo, stones... It was a complete contrast with the other scenographies of the show, ultra sophisticated, composed of polystyrene elements, etc. Two visions of the world. And it was incredible to see that visitors spent twice as much time on our installation, touching, feeling these natural materials. This experience confirmed to me that our connection with the living is there, very present and our cells feel it naturally. It is of the order of kinesthesia. By questioning our relationship with beauty, by asking ourselves how to raise our gaze to beauty, I think that we can reactivate our connection with nature, which, in my opinion, is uninterrupted. Of course, this can be complicated, because we have habits, and getting rid of them is not easy. For designers and artists, it's a creative field that excites them, but for others, particularly artisans and architects, it can be much more complicated. If their signature aesthetic relies on materials that are unsustainable for the planet, changing materials means opening their "material library" to things they're less familiar with. And that can harm their style, their signature. This raises the question: how do you stay true to your signature while evolving your work? I think it's easier when you're fresh out of school and not yet known and loved for your style.

FT: Could creation ultimately help reconnect us with nature?

HA: HA: In any case, it's an underestimated vector. The shift is above all cultural and obviously, as Jean-Luc Godard said, it's always been the "margins that make the page." In the margins there are artists, designers, architects, and urban planners too.

La FT: Construction is a major challenge in the ecological transition. You're partnering with Plendi, the luxury subsidiary of Vinci Construction, first on your podcast, then on "Les Rencards du Beau," a format for meetings. How exactly is this questioning expressed in architecture? What are the solutions? What are the keys to sustainability in this sector?

HA : Since 2022, our “Rendards du Beau” have been feeding and questioning a group of prescribers, architects and interior designers working in the field of luxury and “thehospitality ". Because, in these professions subject to the strong technical constraints of ERP (Establishments Receiving the Public), we are witnessing a race to understand the issues. On the question of the choice of materials, but also of construction techniques, of " to process "... For example, among the questions: what alternatives are there for chlorine-free swimming pools and spas? How can we ensure projects with a high level of reuse? What does a landscaper bring to the preliminary project planning stage? The question of the economic model is also central. Finally, training is very important. We learn, in particular, to identify materials with the lowest environmental impact. Our collective helps, through these meetings, to make these questions a tipping point towards new reflexes, models, and sectors. Project leaders who innovate and take risks, whom I have met a lot through the podcast, often do not have the financial means to make themselves known. Making people aware is a challenge in itself. This is why, with Marie-Cassandre Bultheel (co-founder of the Biennale Vivant), we are highlighting them with our association, which has been recognized as being of general interest. These initiatives remain fragile.

La FT: When we think about sustainable architecture, we first think about materials, techniques, standards... You add another dimension, which is that of "know-how." Why?

HA: HA: To bring about lasting changes in our practices and uses, the “ mindset ", that is to say the way of thinking, the state of mind, is the prerequisite, otherwise it will not work. From the user's point of view: today, we spend almost 90% of our time inside a box, whether it is an apartment, a house, an office, a train... The relationship with matter and with the building therefore also passes through our senses. How is this experienced and perceived? How is this crossed by our uses, by our gestures, by our attentions? And the answers pass through our body! From the creative point of view, there is this new guard of designers and architects, seeing themselves overwhelmed by the question of the finiteness of resources and by the intensification of climatic disasters, who need to reconnect with matter, to embody what they do, to no longer be only behind a computer, to reconnect, to rediscover meaning too. With these new postures, they are making postures imbued with ego or motivated by the desire to leave a mark, which were successful in recent decades, obsolete. Today, the question facing this new generation of designers and architects is what meaning this has. And how the user will feel within the projects they imagine. And this posture allows, in passing, to rehabilitate the human: man is certainly not a cancer for the planet. On the contrary, he has a role to play through his intelligence, through the fact that we connect, through the fact that we possess formidable means of communication and information at the service of change. Let us give the example of the ceramist who, instead of buying her clay in a store (often mixed and of obscure origin), prefers to pick it close to home in spontaneous clay pits. This gesture alone will allow her to color her creative process differently because it connects her intimately to the living and she will thus naturally want to honor this material, to dialogue and not to control it. Here again, it is a relationship that passes through the body.

FT: How can we link the unique approach of the artisan to the essential transition to scale, so that, effectively, this sustainability is not marginal?

HA: HA: It seems to me that we should ask ourselves whether we should not deconstruct this ever-apparent opposition between a pioneering approach and its scaling up. Because what is important above all is the fact of demonstrating that it is possible to do things differently! And, that is what these pathfinders allow us to do. What is, in my opinion, very important is our discernment: "debunking" the false good ideas. For example, the circular economy of plastic is an illusion, because this material remains fundamentally linear on the scale of a human life. Worse still, it paradoxically imposes the use of virgin plastic. The priority is to reduce plastic to essential uses, to recarbonize our soils.... But the greatest scaling up that is currently taking place is that of proof and desire. In construction, the solutions exist, and they are often forgotten vernacular practices that precisely question the link between the territory and the resources of this territory. History has consistently shown that profound change is not achieved solely through regulation and technical innovation, but also through cultural transformation. Once you put your finger on the cogs, there's no turning back. We also move beyond fads because awareness is based on tangible facts: the depletion of resources, visible pollution, the economic dead ends of certain extra-activist models, etc. I trust in human energy and consciousness. The most desirable scaling up is when this human energy is directed toward the most sustainable alternatives for all of us.

Credit_Maxime_Gambiez

La FT: Referring to the philosopher Baptiste Morizot and the writer Alain Damasio, you use the term "cosmopolitanism." What is the power of words in the transition we must make?

HA: HA: Words shape reality, they are compasses, catalysts for action, conduits of imagination. They allow us to open up spaces for thought. When the term "Anthropocene" appeared, it changed our relationship to time, our relationship to our responsibilities, etc. The fact that we also moved from the expression "sustainable development" to "habitability of the world" opens up other, much more desirable imaginaries... In the same way that today there is an alternative to technical vocabulary, with terms like "harmful", "resource", "stock". Philosophers of life, like Baptiste Morizot, prefer to speak of "river people", "allies of the soil"... In doing so, they reorient our actions. I am a fan of the expression "cosmopolitanism", that is to say, being polite to the cosmos, because it immediately projects us into a new Art de vivre, into new rituals of cohabitation with the living. Words allow these desires to be quickly put into circulation, this broken dialogue with the living, and this is essential. New professions will emerge, because mediation is essential.

FT: Finally, what is your definition of beauty?

HA: HA: I realized that what moves me most is everything that passes through the body. More and more, I try to have my own body as a compass. This is new for me, and it transforms my relationship to my thoughts, to what I perceive visually, to all the cultural references and conditioning with which I am imbued. It is no longer my mind that takes the reins, and this is fascinating to self-observe. It is a dizzying, initiatory adventure, which takes me much further than what I imagined seven years ago, when I first asked myself these questions for the podcast. But for that, you have to allow yourself to trust yourself. I realize how difficult it is to assume singular tastes, in a world where our tastes are linked to the norm, to social class, to a certain idea of ​​beauty. All of this holds us back and prevents us from being fully sincere with ourselves. But when we agree to break down these barriers, when we honestly ask ourselves what moves us, without worrying about what others think, then something powerful happens. We access an incredible form of freedom. Wonder and beauty have a power that is too often underestimated—even if these notions deserve to be collectively questioned in public debate. One recent example particularly struck me. I became aware of the impact of odors on my body. I now feel with new clarity how unbearable certain artificial olfactory signatures have become for me. In certain places—hotels, supermarkets, public spaces—my body reacts strongly, and I am sometimes forced to leave. Conversely, I experienced an olfactory shock with Paysan Parfumeur. This artisan perfumer has recreated a living humus, a naturally decomposing material that exudes the scent of “petrichor,” the scent of the forest after the rain. This living scent, coming from a soil that is truly transformed by the action of microorganisms, moved me. It awakened something very profound within me. A raw, pure emotion that surged forth powerfully. Since then, I have been searching for these scents that grip, that awaken the heart with a start.