Énergies légères: usages, architectures, paysages is an exhibition directed by Raphaël Ménard with the collaboration of Jean Souviron, originally presented at the Pavillon de l’Arsenal in Paris. The project questions the materiality of energy: how much does energy production actually weigh when it takes the form of mass, architecture, and territory?
The exhibition is divided into three sections. The first one is a genealogy of energy forms, tracing how different sources, from fire to atomic energy, have produced architectural artefacts such as mills, dams, power plants, or solar chimneys.
The second part is a contemporary atlas of energy-related architectures that compares twelve energy systems based on quantitative criteria like material density, land occupation, associated emissions, and usage density.
Finally, six videos called “post-carbon landscapes” present urban and rural scenes digitally altered with what the authors call “light” interventions: small-scale wind turbines, streetcars, or climate-responsive furniture, among others.
Énergies légères offers visual tools and metrics to imagine a viable, acceptable, and restrained energy transition, one based on source diversification, decentralized production, and energy savings, from a broader perspective than the one to which we are used to.

Exhibition created by the Pavillon de l’Arsenal, from the Pavillon de l’Arsenal, the Center for Architecture and Urbanism of Paris and the Greater Paris