Through animation, installation, sculpture and painting, Victor Cord’homme reveals the complexity and tireless workings of an urban system over which humans are losing control. He works on the autonomy of his installations and exhibitions, whose behavior varies according to the audience, invited to interact yet powerless to do so.
The Champs‑Élysées, History & Perspectives exhibition presents the study conducted between 2018 and 2020 at the behest of the Comité Champs‑Élysées by PCA-STREAM in collaboration with some fifty researchers, historians, scientists, engineers, artists, and economic and cultural actors from France and abroad. It traces the development of “the most beautiful avenue in the world,” analyzes its current usages, and proposes a vision of its potential evolutions in response to the challenges this area of the city faces in the present day. The Champs-Élysées is becoming a collective space to experiment with the development of a sustainable, desirable and inclusive city by 2030 through focusing on four main strategic priorities: reducing the impact of urban mobilities, rethinking nature as an ecosystem, seeking new uses, and the use of data for measurement and regulation.
With Marie Sarah Adenis, artist, Aurélie Mossé, research professor at ENSAD, and Simon Trancart, Head of Adaptative Laboratory Evolution at Ginkgo BioWorks. Wood is often referred to as a living material because it reacts to ambient humidity and develops a patina. However, when a tree is cut down to exploit its wood, it dies and ceases to photosynthesise. What other forms of living matter can we cultivate and grow to build and create, and what ethics should we apply? What does the future hold for organic materials that can regenerate rapidly or perhaps never die and continue to evolve as living matter? From the colourimetric properties of microbes to the use of algae to develop alternative chemical reactions to form cements and ceramics that emit less carbon, what possibilities does living matter offer us for rethinking creation?
In this round-table discussion, the four researchers look at the issue of transition through the prism of the different notions of maintenance, transformation, repair and restoration. These concepts are reminiscent of the issues of destruction, reconstruction and rehabilitation in architecture.
“ Sewers are the mirror image of what happens on the surface. ”
“ Sewers are the mirror image of what happens on the surface. ”
Did you know that we have a lot to learn from sewers? Sewers contain numerous chemical indicators that provide information about the practices of people living above ground, such as the use of medicines and drugs, diet and the state of intestinal flora. By focusing on the city of Paris, the EGOUTS (sewers) research project, funded by the French National Research Agency (ANR), is seeking to shed light on public policy ‘through the dark side of the City of Light’.
Theoretical experiments around the concept of the “metabolic-city” place living organisms at the heart of a new paradigm, encouraging a systemic approach. In urban and architectural practice, what tools are available to measure metabolism? Pauline Detavernier, Doctor in Architecture and Research and Development Project Manager at PCA-STREAM, examines existing measures of the life cycle and urban metabolism to outline a methodology.
Etienne Riot, urban planning researcher, and Pauline Detavernier, architecture researcher, are at the heart of applied research and innovation at PCA-STREAM. Together, they talk about the different facets of this research, from a CIFRE contract, to the setting up of a university chair project, to the subjects explored by the collaborators.
Périg Pitrou is an anthropologist, CNRS Research Director at the Maison Française d’Oxford and head of the “Anthropology of Life” team at the Collège de France. He is Scientific Director of the City-Metabolism Chair, which links the agency with PSL University (Paris Sciences et Lettres). The aim: to identify how interdisciplinary collaborations can help overcome the challenges of building future urban worlds.
Léone-Alix Mazaud, a CIFRE doctoral student (PCA-STREAM / École des Mines), here repositioned our definition of the “metabolic city” within a history of approaches to urban “metabolism”; a long-standing metaphor used in the study of urban systems, yet one that has been reconfigured over time.
Léonie Debrabandère is the Director of the WAAO, Lille’s architecture center, and curator of the exhibition “La ville tourne en rond?” How can we get away from anthropocentric, productivist logics and create a city that self-regulates, regenerates and recycles itself? The exhibition takes us on a semantic and tangible exploration of the circular city, allowing anyone to implement re-usable solutions on all scales.
Périg Pitrou is an anthropologist at the CNRS and head of the “Anthropology of Life” team at the Collège de France. He is Scientific Director of the City-Metabolism Chair, which brings together PCA-STREAM and PSL University (Paris Sciences et Lettres). The aim: to identify how interdisciplinary collaborations can help overcome the challenges of building the urban worlds of the future.
The notion of urban metabolism can be viewed in several ways. From a quantitative perspective, by considering flows; from a political ecology perspective, by considering social factors; and from an urban design perspective, by considering the sum of intertwined environmental and social ecosystems beyond administrative borders. In each of these approaches, urban technologies and the availability of data provide exciting prospects. To read the extended version : Do cities metabolize?
The use of the living organism metaphor in the field of urban system studies dates far back and is continuously reconfigured as events play out. Here, Léone-Alix Mazaud, a CIFRE PhD student (PCA-STREAM/École des Mines de Paris), repositions the meaning of the “urban metabolism” as defined by our firm within the history of approaches on the subject matter in order to highlight its unique features.
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.
stream voices
Eager to share more generously the results of its collaborations and research, PCA-STREAM publishes STREAM VOICES, its online magazine!