Re-enchanting the Champs-Élysées — Christophe Léribault
- Publish On 19 February 2020
- Christophe Léribault
- 1 minutes
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Ashfika Rahman is a visual artist based in Bangladesh, who recently won the Future Generation Art Prize awarded by the PinchukArtCentre in Ukraine. Faced with the overwhelming power of information systems that are serving dominant narratives, she is working on creating alternative medium of expression, giving their voice back to marginalized communities in her homeland, particularly women. Through her art, Rahman questions myths, folk tales and widely spread prejudice that are still shaping our cultures and legitimating violence, adopting a contemporary and feminist lense. We met with her to discuss her recent work, Behula These Days where she brings together ancient crafts and new techniques to share the poignant and heart-wrenching experiences of women living in one of the most floodprone areas in Bangladesh.
On the occasion of its integration into the Paris Sciences et Lettres (PSL) university consortium, the École nationale supérieure d’architecture de Paris-Malaquais is publishing a manifesto that asserts its institutional positioning. Far more than a mere text, this manifesto lays the foundations for a committed academic vision, emphasizing the urgent need to train architects engaged in transforming the ways we inhabit the world. Structured around twelve key concepts, it is intended as a compass to guide the school’s pedagogical and strategic choices, in alignment with the 2025–2029 National Strategy for Architecture. In this interview, its director, Jean-Baptiste de Froment, reflects on the values driving this project and on how the school positions itself as a proactive agent of thought and action within the contemporary architectural landscape.
Over the span of several months, students from GOBELINS Paris scouted La Défense, examining the iconic business district from the fresh perspective of urban metabolism. As part of a documentary workshop led by Pierre-Jérôme Jehel and Laetitia Guillemin (GOBELINS) and designed in partnership with researchers from the City-Metabolism Chair at PSL University, some thirty students explored this territory. They did so by treating it not as a mere backdrop but as a living organism, traversed by flows, tensions, and rhythms, using photography as a tool for revelation. Their projects, located at the crossroads of artistic creation and research, unveil an alternative reading of this mineral space, between invisible flows and underlying tensions. Both sensitive and rigorous, this inquiry is chronicled here by Corinne Feïss Jehel (EPHE-PSL), Pierre-Jérôme Jehel, and Émilie d’Orgeix (EPHE-PSL) as part of a research project conducted by the City-Metabolism Chair (which is financially supported by PCA-STREAM, Artelia, and Groupama Immobilier).
Raphaëlle Guidée is a specialist in narrative representations of economic, environmental and societal collapse. For over 10 years, she has analyzed the narratives surrounding Detroit’s bankruptcy in order to understand how an apparent ruin of capitalism can inspire discourses of domination or resistance. In La ville d’après : Détroit, une enquête narrative [The Aftermath City: Detroit, a narrative investigation] (Flammarion), rather than focusing on fictions, she seeks out testimonies and concrete stories, believing that modern times don’t need new narratives. We simply need alternative narratives. Read the transcription of her podcast below.
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.
In urban planning and geography, the concept of metabolism is frequently discussed. This organicist metaphor likens a territory to a body, traversed by flows of materials and energy that link it to its environment. From a quantitative perspective, these flows can be measured over time and space to assess what a territory consumes, processes, and produces. However, a qualitative approach is equally crucial, examining the political and social trade-offs that shape urban metabolisms. With this in mind, we spoke with two researchers, Clément Dillenseger and Pierre Desvaux, who have explored the waste sector to analyze the socio-technical infrastructures that underpin metabolism and the imaginaries that shape its perception.
A philosopher and senior lecturer at the National School of Architecture of Marseille, Matthieu Duperrex explores ‘sentinel landscapes’—polluted soils, engineered rivers, industrial port zones—from a decolonial, multidisciplinary perspective attentive to the various ways of narrating the damaged world we have inherited. He regards these sites both as places of warning and as spaces of knowledge.