Confluence: an educational approach that is open, alternative, international, collaborative and innovative, offering a promising future for architecture.
Based on an evolving and radical understanding of research, experimentation and trans-disciplinarity, Confluence proposes:

• to construct an unparalleled understanding of architecture at the intersection of disciplines,
• to cross prospective and experimental visions,
• to create an appetite for engagement,
• to generate unforeseen alternatives,
• to resist the uniformity of production and imposed standards,
• to question and go beyond the implicit limits of architecture,

in order to create unimaginable opportunities.

Confluence, anchored in the economy of the world, is a site of synergies, a site of hybridization.
Architects, critics, artists, thinkers, philosophers, film-makers, scientists, engineers and manufacturers work together to share knowledge and discoveries. Without stylistic prejudice or ideology, a diversity of cultures, knowledge and practices makes it possible to develop ideas and projects in order to imagine all that is possible.

Intuition, analysis, confrontation, reaction, beginnings, destabilization, emulation, convergence – Confluence.

The teaching of architecture must allow students to confront problems encountered in the world and to use new tools to address them.

• Confluence is the site of emerging new relations between systems of thought, modes of construction, aesthetic systems, manufacturing processes and modes of organization. The specificity of the experimentation/creation/research at Confluence is its capacity to bring together prospective visions with their deployment.
• Confluence is the place where open attitudes and autonomous temperaments are forged through diverse forms of experimentation.

The convergence of forms of knowledge
Different disciplines like physics, biology, neurology and new technologies as well as sociology and the visual arts take part — in an original way — in the elaboration of teaching and contribute to the elaboration of research and new projects.

The convergence of conception/production
The studio project is an experience nurtured by a continuous interchange between theory and experimentation.

The convergence of difference teaching methods
Courses, studios, seminars, workshops, conferences, student associations as well as internships and professional immersion experiences insure that all students take part in a program that is in touch with the different aspects of architectural practice.

The convergence of local, national and international experiences
The network of partnerships include international schools, local industries, national and local research centers as well as corporations.

Teaching is structured around contemporary questions within the field of architecture that intersect and draw from wide-ranging fields: critical thinking, social action, etc. The objective of Confluence is to respond to social concerns. 
The following thematic fields are treated in a transversal and non-hierarchical manner in order to reinforce the autonomy and personal implication of students who construct their own research programs linked to their specific preoccupations.

THEMES

Neurosciences
The neurosciences relate to the study of the human nervous system and are at the intersection of biology, medicine, psychology, chemistry, computer science and mathematics. The link to architecture manifests itself in the relation between the body and space. The example of neurological deficiencies that affect individuals in their relationship to the environment opens fields of exploration for architecture and for the city. Space itself affects and conditions the body in return. It is therefore essential to study all of the interrelations in order to question and to propose new environments.

New Technologies
The new tools at our disposal today, whether in the field of information, or connection and communication, renew possibilities for mobility, relations and exchanges in space. They question and transform modes of life and therefore places of habitation. It is therefore essential to study all of the interrelations with the space generated by these new technologies in order to question and propose new places.

Visual Culture
The burgeoning of new media has transformed the traditional vision of the links between art and architecture. For example, cinema was the first to transform, and still transforms, the visual culture of space. New means of conception and representation continue to inform and modify this culture. It is therefore essential to study the new visual cultures generated by new medias in order to question and propose new spaces.

Social Action
Social Action involves the study of those acts that permit individuals to adapt to their social environments.The city as a human environment - similar to other “natural” environments - is the field of observation, par excellence, of critical renewal and action for architecture. The observation and the analysis of critical situations in architecture generate a renewal of thinking and action for the city. It is therefore essential to introduce diverse approaches – sociological, anthropological, ethnological – to these situations in order to question and propose new environments.

Physics
Geography, materials and energy have generated new fields of exploration for the human environment. By appropriating these domains of research, architecture explores its proper field of intervention. While geography allows us to better understand the territorial conditions of architecture, new materials offer architecture constructive possibilities and new energies open fields of action that renew architecture and the city. It is therefore essential to consider research in the physical sciences in order to propose new territories.

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