Concrete Transitions

The Concrete Transitions project questions the ecological transition from a resolutely material angle: the deterioration of reinforced concrete in Walloon bridges and dams. Rather than adding a layer of "innovation", the project starts from the observation that our societies have inherited infrastructures massively built in the XXᵉ century (1950-1970) and which are simultaneously aging, exposing technical, financial and political fragilities. It proposes to study the "politics of infrastructural aging": the body of knowledge, maintenance practices and public arbitrations that condition our ability to transform these systems while respecting planetary limits. The research is based on two hypotheses: (1) the success of ecological transitions depends on the way we manage and transform these ageing infrastructures; (2) this management is inseparable from knowledge about materials (their behaviour, interactions with the environment, and the data and measurements that document them). The main objective is to shed light on how reinforced concrete, an emblematic but vulnerable material (steel corrosion is often invisible), has become an object of knowledge, maintenance and public policy, from the original promises of durability to current concerns. The two fields - bridges and dams - offer a rich and highly generalizable contrast.

At the heart of the theoretical framework, the notion of "material politics" invites us to follow the production, circulation and debate of data and measurements on materials; Concrete Transitions extends this perspective to long-term maintenance andupkeep, in real-life conditions and in interaction with hydric environments that are particularly aggressive for reinforced concrete.

The project also proposes a shift in perspective, away from the " failure paradigm " (bridges and dams are only considered when they collapse) towards a "wear paradigm", more compatible with an anchored ecological transition, attentive to gradual degradation, budgetary trade-offs and territorial uses.

The survey combines history, ethnography and participatory foresight.

Players involved in the project

Main promoter :Pierre Delvenne - SPIRAL / UR Cité (Political Science). Specialist in STS, transitions and infrastructure governance,

Alexis Zimmer - Architecture Research Unit (URA). Environmental historian applied to architecture/urban planning

D'une certaine gaieté ASBLand SPW Mobilité & Infrastructures (management of > 6,000 bridges, technical expertise, access to audits/data). Their involvement supports access to sites, archives and recent public programs on bridges and dams.

• Consolidatedhistorical knowledge of reinforced concrete durability and howdata (measurements, inspections, archives) become policy;
• Mapping of maintenance knowledge and practices (tacit/explicit) and governance recommendations for managingwear and tear rather than just failure;
• Scenarios and transition paths co-elaborated (territorial workshops, fiction labs), feeding into public decisions, maintenance strategies and the designof sober and circular solutions;
• Dissemination to the general public and professionals (podcasts, maps, articles) to establish a shared culture of transition around existing infrastructures.

Concrete Transitions provides decision-makers, managers and communities with the tools they need to make infrastructure last in a different way: to understand what reinforced concrete does to territories (and vice versa), to politicize wear and tear rather than the spectacular, and to co-constructsolutions that are technically realistic, socially just and ecologically sustainable.