DJURIC TARDIO ARCHITECTES

Mirco Tardio (1970) studied architecture in Venice, Milan and Paris and worked in prestigious offices in Paris. With Caroline Djuric (1974), he founded the architectural firm Djuric-Tardio Architectes in 2004, to develop projects and researches at different urban scale, up to single-family house. Eco-sustainable architecture is the favored theme, with the aim of investigating the modern needs of living in the contemporary dense urban and suburban areas, while optimizing the city’s energy consumption and the sustainability of its districts. These criteria are the basis of the architectural production of the study, with the modularity and the future and unpredictable reconversion of buildings, embracing a wider stance about the sustainability of the project. Djuric-Tardio Architectes develops projects on a small scale but always within a broader vision: to develop a “chart” of principles for the development of a socially inclusive and sustainable future in our cities. In 2012, feedbacks from several eco-sustainable family houses projects start to nourish their theory of an innovative urban-suburban development, based on densification and the respect of the historical scale of districts. The quality of life of inhabitants pass before the mainstream threat of the urban sprawl, which the firm partly considers as an excuse for a schizophrenic optimization of the land. Djuric-Tardio Architectes analyse the interaction between the user and its house, thanks to the variety of their clients in terms of social origins, and therefore assert the high role of the architects’ proposals in the management of energy in the city. Indeed, they stand at the crossroads between individual needs and wishes, cities ambitions of sustainability, and the proposals made by energy suppliers and engineering consultants. Starting from family houses and housing, they are imagining a future urban landscape, based on a different approach of the inhabitant. DTA does not aim at building emblematic project, but at finding solutions to change the rules of control and regulation, to create a smart city based on urban planning but also on the relation of the inhabitant towards its city (including its energy management). It is definitively not about selling a catalog of green technologies to people. Through the “Architecture Bas Carbone EDF” competition (2014) (low carbon architecture/launched by the french energy supplier EDF), DTA is now working on such solutions on the Gennevilliers project, 15 houses spread on 4 plots in Paris close suburb. The research is focused on a new concept of house’ autonomy, leading Djuric-Tardio Architectes to conceive a new outline of smartgrids. The firm participated in various international competitions in architecture and design, also collaborating with different architectural offices on different programs. The Helsinki Library is exhibited at the MOMA in New York, and their temporary, modular and urban nursery concept Sticks at the MAXXI museum in Roma. They won the prize for wood constructions “Lauriers Bois 2012” in Grenoble, the 2012 Prize for the Emerging Architects for Wallpaper London and Edf Low Carbone Price in 2014