A graduate of the École des Ponts et Chaussées of Paris and of MIT in Boston, he went on to lead the international activities of Ricardo Bofill’s Taller de Arquitectura in Paris for ten years. In 2000, he received a degree in architecture from the École Nationale Supérieure d’Architecture Paris Belleville and founded the PCA-STREAM. In 2008, he launched an international and multidisciplinary research program, Stream, that strives to anticipate the mutations of the contemporary world.
For Daniel Buren, architecture is an open-air studio. In an exclusive interview with architect Philippe Chiambaretta, he talks about his site-specific work, where art and architecture meet, just like the Nuages Colorés that cover the scales of the 175 Haussmann glass roof.
Stripes, banners and colored filters are all part of the signature of renowned artist Daniel Buren. His work is rooted in the landscapes and architectures that welcome him and have become his open-air studio. In an exclusive interview with architect Philippe Chiambaretta, he talks about his attraction to transparency and his many collaborations. Discover Les Nuages Colorés, which cover the glass roof of 175 Haussmann with shimmering lights.
Stream is a transdisciplinary magazine founded by Philippe Chiambaretta in 2009. By bringing together philosophers, sociologists, artists, engineers, biologists, economists and architects, it crystallizes a kaleidoscopic, forward-looking vision of the urban issues it tackles. It’s a way of doing research, by confronting expertise, at the crossroads of knowledge!
In France, the construction sector accounts for one third of the country’s CO2 emissions. Materials, which are partly responsible for this ratio, are extracted, transported, processed, poured or placed, dumped or incinerated… All these steps are opportunities to work on limiting impacts, involving architects, among other things, in deploying a new aesthetic.
Beyond the debates surrounding the Anthropocene—dating it, taking responsibility—the need to combat the disastrous effects of human development on the planet is beyond doubt. Acknowledging that these consequences are specifically incarnated in cities, architect Philippe Chiambaretta points toward a paradigm shift—moving from a mechanical vision of the world to an idea centered on the living—that reactivates the notion of a metabolism. The concept of the living allows us to go beyond the dualism and anthropocentrism introduced by modernity, driving us toward a symbolic and practical idea of the city as an urban metabolism and pointing toward an approach that takes the ecological challenge into account in order to “manage” the city. Flying in the face of the formal pride of the architect, the figure of metabolic planner emerges, able to combine complex visions and approaches, notably by moving beyond the traditional rifts between urban protagonists, working toward an intense diversity of uses, opening up temporal dynamics, and by reintegrating the living.
Interview by Ingrid Nappi-Choulet on February 23rd, 2016 at ESSEC Business School, on the occasion of the publication of Cahier # 4 : “Digital in the City of Tomorrow : What are the stakes for real estate? ” for the Chair of Real Estate and Sustainable Development – ESSEC Business School
New relationships to nature have been fostered by the increasing awareness of our entry in the era of the Anthropocene and as a result the figure of biological life has largely become an obsessive metaphor. For artists, it is less a form of aesthetical inspiration than an opportunity to reconsider their work by circumventing the separations and simplifications of modern culture. Pierre Huyghe talks to Stream about his interest for the complexity of biological life, and the manner in which he is trying to incorporate it in his work over time, as well as his concepts of indifference, non-destination and under-determination. Introducing biological life in an oeuvre comes down to accepting a loss of control, creating a spectrum of undefined possibilities, and bringing about areas of “non-knowledge” and speculative conditions in the life forms. Pierre Huygue is a French artist. A recipient of many awards, and having been exhibited in the most prestigious international cultural institutions, his work investigates the complexity of organic life in order to create the conditions for the emergence of a self-evolving work. Interview with Éric Troncy, advises large companies on their strategy, organization and management culture. He is the co-founder of he consulting firm Quartier Libre, and Philippe Chiambaretta, graduated from the École des Ponts et Chaussées of Paris and MIT in Boston. He is the founder and director of PCA-STREAM.
The architect is located at the heart of urban challenges whose solutions will allow a city to adapt to profound changes in the global age of the Anthropocene. He must be able to go beyond traditional knowledge and overcome the obsession with form and the idea of a solitary creator. Philippe Chiambaretta strives to synthesize these factors and the challenges of the current radical paradigm shift with the collapse of the modern Western worldview. Based on an understanding of the Anthropocene era, he seeks the foundations of a new vision of architecture based on an open and collaborative approach to creation. His view is not blinded by the promises of technology, but is one in which the city exists in a continuum with the biosphere. Philippe Chiambaretta graduated from the École des Ponts et Chaussées of Paris and MIT in Boston. He is the founder and director of PCA-STREAM.
Designing an inclusive city implies involving their residents in urban projects, but what is the role of architects and urban planners in this process? For Andrew Freear, the head of the Rural Studio program, they both have the ethical responsibility of getting locally involved via concrete projects. Architectural schools must thus take on training citizen architects by engaging them in learning by doing, and thus have them redevelop a deep connection with context and places, acting as neighbors and activists within communities in order to collectively carry out experimental projects that tangibly improve society and the environment.
The two Lebanese artists and filmmakers were awarded the 2017 Marcel Duchamp Award for Unconformities, a project currently on display at Hamburger Bahnhof in Berlin. This artwork, like their approach, is based on a methodology of investigation and excavation and aims to offer another reading of history and the traces of the past.
Nicolas Nova is a social anthropologist. Inspired by New Media Studies and design fiction, he contends that the future of design lies in recycling and reparation as well as reinventing forms and functions. Did you know that a used flip-flop could serve as a lighter?
The geographer and orientalist Augustin Berque revisits the polysemic dimension of the term “milieu,” and explains the distinction made by mesology—“the area of biology that deals with the relationships between the environments and organisms”—between “environment” and “milieu.” The reality of things differs depending on the environment of each species or culture, the object doesn’t exist in itself but according to its relationship with the subject. In this way, mesology goes much further than the subject/object dualism of modern science. Ontologically “trajective,” the environment is neither objective nor subjective, but firmly between the two theoretical subject/object centers. Berque takes the term “mediance,” meaning the dynamic coupling of the individual and their surroundings, from the Japanese “fūdo,” to which he adds “trajection,” a process that results in the “mediance” of human existence in its concrete surroundings. Taken as a whole, all human environments, distinct from the biosphere through their eco-techno-symbolic dimension, form the ecumene. For architecture, this implies a respect for history and the environment, without mimicking ancient forms, creating from the “mediance” of each place.
Larissa Fassler is a “Neo-Situationist” artist. By exploring places over the course of many hours, she gleans their ephemeral essence, which she then superimposes on the fixed urban master plan. The subjective maps thus generated highlight both urban narratives and history.
Maximum is a design studio that maximizes the value of waste; its material, its form and its engineering. Some materials are transformed in a semi-industrial process while others give birth to unique pieces, such as the glass walls of the Centre Pompidou caterpillar.
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Eager to share more generously the results of its collaborations and research, PCA-STREAM publishes STREAM VOICES, its online magazine!