Le Feu Commun
Robert Harding
Paul Mazzalovo
Robert Harding and Paul Mazzalovo graduated in architecture and constructive cultures from ENSA Normandie in 2022, which led them to found Espace Disponible with Hugues Droesch in 2023.
Our first project consisted in the deconstruction and reconstruction of a timber framed workshop to save it from demolition. This exercise became a fertile field for experimentation and cross-bordering practices from architecture to design, craftmanship, reclaimed ressources bargin hunters and so on. Now this building houses our office and workshop : an entirely reversible construction.
Since then, the team has worked on the exhibition "4°C Entre Toi et Moi" as part of the Biennale d'Architecture et de Paysage d'Ile-de-France 2025, as well as a Cerema awarded project, contributions to Éditions Cosa Mentale, finalist to an open call of the Concéntrico architecture festival and a series of experimentations using reclaimed materials throught various ongoing projects.
From 2022 to date, Harding and Mazzalovo joined the ENSA Normandie teaching team as researchers and "Experimentations" studio teachers.
Le Feu Commun is a spatial investigation tracing the overlooked lifeline of one of many industrial timbers: marine cable spools. From forest to cladding, this project follows the trajectory of wood harvested in European forests, processed in sawmills, industrially shaped into cable reels for submarine infrastructures, and finally reappropriated by architects through the Yakisugi charring technique.
As climate urgency reshapes architectural disciplines, Le Feu Commun seeks to expand the circular imaginary beyond post-demolition salvage. This project focuses on industrial side-streams — such as maritime timber — often excluded from traditional reuse conversations despite their structural integrity and aesthetic potential. By combining material forensics and symbolic transformation, the work proposes a new ritual of reuse: not based on recovery from ruin, but on reinterpretation of the residual waste.
We propose to chart the layered life of this singular type of wood — from sapling to reawakening — through a fimed documentary, a 1 to 1 scale cladding experiment and a series of sculptural, performative, and spatial installations. Our aim is not simply to valorize the reused and reclaimed, but to interrogate its cultural, ecological, and industrial grounding.
The wooden cable drum, often made of high-grade pine or spruce, begins as a silent actor in global infrastructure. Its role in carrying the arteries of connectivity across oceans is temporary, yet vital. Once emptied of its function, the spools are discarded, left to decay or burn without purpose. This project reclaims that moment of abandonment as a state of possibility. Through Yakisugi, fire becomes the tool of revival—an act of care and transformation that opens a new future for the material.
We ask : what if reuse began not with waste, but with excess ? What if architecture no longer waited for ruin to reclaim, but looked to overproduction and obsolescence of industry as fertile ground for action?