State-funded militant infrastructure? CERFI’s équipements collectifs in the intellectual history of architecture

Abstract

‘Militant’ research that interrogates the operations of the modern state is not often state-funded; even less common is the conception of architecture as a militant practice. Yet these two conditions coincide in the case of the French research collective CERFI (Centre d’études, de recherches et de formations institutionelles, or Centre for Institutional Studies, Research and Training). Starting in 1967, CERFI directed state funding toward research carried out by psychoanalysts, psychiatrists, architects, urbanists, historians, care workers, activists and sociologists. These researchers developed theories and practices of what they called ‘équipements collectifs’, a form of physical and social infrastructure that served needs the state had not identified or prioritised. This concept of infrastructure helped CERFI to obtain research contracts from the French Ministry of Equipment, which in turn allowed them to develop interdisciplinary, collaborative and participatory models for conceptualising and designing infrastructure which would have otherwise been impossible. At a moment like this one, when infrastructure studies take a more prominent role in the discipline of architecture, and where programming decisions are often driven more by data than by deliberation, CERFI’s theories are important to revisit.