La Vie à l’œuvre (Life in the Making), a collective of researchers in the natural sciences, humanities and social sciences, as well as artists, was set up at the Université Paris Sciences & Lettres in 2014 to explore interdisciplinary collective intelligence around the theme of the living. Functioning as an incubator of ideas, they explore the potential of living beings, particularly via experiments between art and science. A Stream 05 – New Intelligences article to discover!
Justine Emard is a visual artist. Her installations use AI to understand the living, exploring the boundaries between organic life and artificial intelligence. Bee swarms, encephalographic recordings and prehistoric paintings become learning supports for algorithms that, contrary to dystopian imaginations, generate new supra-hyper-organisms.
“ What will Paris be like under 50°C? How can we postpone this scenario and be better prepared for it? ”
“ What will Paris be like under 50°C? How can we postpone this scenario and be better prepared for it? ”
Our dense, mineral-rich capital is ill-suited to the extreme heat we’ll increasingly have to cope with. So what adaptation strategies can we implement? This is what we asked to Alexandre Florentin, Paris councillor responsible for resilience and climate issues. He chaired the “Paris at 50 degrees” mission, which delivered its report a few months ago: what fields of action for architects and urban designers?
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!
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.
Bertrand Julien-Laferrière, former CIO of the Société Foncière Lyonnaise, collaborated with PCA-STREAM on the design of #cloud.paris. This building, located in the heart of Paris, combines work spaces that coincides with the aspirations of the creative classes and the employees of high value-added industries, which are turning away from the single-use business centers of the periphery. As part of the documentary “PCA-STREAM: From research to action”, we asked him to reconsider the development of this project. Here, he goes into more detail about the relationship between the client and the architect in the French context.
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 urban challenges of the Urbanocene have brought back into the spotlight the complexity of cities as a milieu and the lack of relevance of siloed knowledge and protagonists within modern urbanism. We must develop new approaches and foster urban innovation—but how can the protagonists making of the city of the future be trained to address this challenge? Aalto University, and, in particular, the Design Factory, headed by Kalevi Ekman, point towards a new approach. Born from the merger of three universities in Helsinki—in Technology, Art and Design, and Business—, it encourages cross-disciplinary tracks, entrepreneurial mindset, and prototype-based learning.
Gilbert Emont is director of the Palladio Foundation, a think tank focusing on urban space founded in 2008, which promotes research and exchanges in real estate and urban planning, in order to better meet the challenges of urban space construction. He describes how the Foundation defines what the urban society is, and how the city and its builders must adapt to this paradigm shift.
Xavier Veilhan is a visual artist. He represents France at the 57th Venice Biennale. Since he has been collaborating with PCA-STREAM on a regular basis for a decade, we interviewed him for the documentary “PCA-STREAM: from research to action”. In this talk, he evokes his relationship to architecture, which he considers both as a constraint to the creation process and as a source of inspiration and reflection that nourishes his practice.
Episode 3/5 of the documentary “PCA-STREAM, from research to action” examines the question raised by STREAM 03 on the links between urbanization and preservation of natural resources in the so-called Anthropocene era, in which Man has become the dominant transformation force of the biosphere. How can we sustainably live on a finite planet? Based on a cradle-to-cradle dynamic, the Stream Building offers a concrete vision of what a metabolic building can be, producing and reusing its own resources. – In the documentary “PCA-STREAM, from research to action”, filmmaker Gilles Coudert takes his author’s perspective, a specialist in contemporary art and architecture, on the link between research and action at the heart of the practice of PCA-STREAM agency. He gives the floor to an international panel of researchers, creators and professionals associated with the work of the agency: philosophers, art critics, artists, investors, policy makers, users, etc. Three architectural projects, realized or in progress, are taken as case studies to illustrate the conditioning of the architectural form by this collaborative exploration approach: #cloud.paris (with SFL), the Stream Building (winner of the competition « Réinventer Paris » , with Eurosic) and Shake (Euralille, with Nacarat). Those projects embody the way in which a metabolic, open and innovative vision of the city takes shape through the exchange and creation of new synergies between actors and visions to move from urban utopia to concrete realization. A film directed by Gilles Coudert for the Lyon Architecture Biennial. A co-production PCA-STREAM and a.p.r.e.s. Production, 54 min, 2017. – With the interventions of: Nicolas Bel, engineer, specialist in urban agriculture, founder of Topager – Timothée Boitouzet, architect, entrepreneur, founder of Woodoo – Patrick Bouchain, architect and set designer – Nicolas Bourriaud, art historian, art critic and exhibition curator – Alain Bublex, artist – Thomas Camus, director of operations development at Eurosic – Philippe Chiambaretta, architect, founder of PCA-STREAM – Gilles Clément, landscape designer -Jean-Louis Cohen, architect, architecture historian, professor at Collège de France – Gilles Coudert, director, producer and publisher – Justine Culioli, assistant director of major projects at SFL – Clément Dirié, editor and art critic – Gilbert Emont, director of the Institut Palladio foundation – Julien Eymeri, strategy consultant and co-founder of Quartier Libre – Aurélien Gillier, publisher and designer, editor-in-chief of STREAM 02 – Bertrand Julien-Laferrière, former general manager of SFL – Thomas Lierman, CEO of Nacarat – Éric Mangion, artistic director of the National Contemporary Art Center Villa Arson – Ariane Michel, artist and filmmaker – Jean-Louis Missika, Deputy Mayor of Paris, in charge of town planning, architecture, the Greater Paris project, economic development and attractiveness – Yann Moulier-Boutang, economist and essayist, professor at UTC Compiègne and UTSEUS Shanghai – Pierre Musso, philosopher, professor at Telecom ParisTech – Julien Prévieux, artist – Julie Rouart, editor, editorial director of the art department at Flammarion – David Ruy, architect, director of SCI-Arc post-graduate program, Los Angeles – Xavier Veilhan, artist.
The episode 4/5 of the documentary “PCA-STREAM, from research to action” outlines the subject of STREAM 04 (which will be published at the end of 2017). This new issue explores the repercussions of the Anthropocene era. It proposes to consider a new paradigm for the living, seen as a continuum, to overcome the existing divisions between nature and culture, object and subject, living and non-living. The Shake building in Lille, on which a part of the neighboring park winds up and continues, is a concrete example of this new cycle of study. – In the documentary “PCA-STREAM, from research to action”, filmmaker Gilles Coudert takes his author’s perspective, a specialist in contemporary art and architecture, on the link between research and action at the heart of the practice of PCA-STREAM agency. He gives the floor to an international panel of researchers, creators and professionals associated with the work of the agency: philosophers, art critics, artists, investors, policy makers, users, etc. Three architectural projects, realized or in progress, are taken as case studies to illustrate the conditioning of the architectural form by this collaborative exploration approach: #cloud.paris (with SFL), the Stream Building (winner of the competition « Réinventer Paris » , with Eurosic) and Shake (Euralille, with Nacarat). Those projects embody the way in which a metabolic, open and innovative vision of the city takes shape through the exchange and creation of new synergies between actors and visions to move from urban utopia to concrete realization. A film directed by Gilles Coudert for the Lyon Architecture Biennial. A co-production PCA-STREAM and a.p.r.e.s. Production, 54 min, 2017. – With the interventions of: Nicolas Bel, engineer, specialist in urban agriculture, founder of Topager – Timothée Boitouzet, architect, entrepreneur, founder of Woodoo – Patrick Bouchain, architect and set designer – Nicolas Bourriaud, art historian, art critic and exhibition curator – Alain Bublex, artist – Thomas Camus, director of operations development at Eurosic – Philippe Chiambaretta, architect, founder of PCA-STREAM – Gilles Clément, landscape designer -Jean-Louis Cohen, architect, architecture historian, professor at Collège de France – Gilles Coudert, director, producer and publisher – Justine Culioli, assistant director of major projects at SFL – Clément Dirié, editor and art critic – Gilbert Emont, director of the Institut Palladio foundation – Julien Eymeri, strategy consultant and co-founder of Quartier Libre – Aurélien Gillier, publisher and designer, editor-in-chief of STREAM 02 – Bertrand Julien-Laferrière, former general manager of SFL – Thomas Lierman, CEO of Nacarat – Éric Mangion, artistic director of the National Contemporary Art Center Villa Arson – Ariane Michel, artist and filmmaker – Jean-Louis Missika, Deputy Mayor of Paris, in charge of town planning, architecture, the Greater Paris project, economic development and attractiveness – Yann Moulier-Boutang, economist and essayist, professor at UTC Compiègne and UTSEUS Shanghai – Pierre Musso, philosopher, professor at Telecom ParisTech – Julien Prévieux, artist – Julie Rouart, editor, editorial director of the art department at Flammarion – David Ruy, architect, director of SCI-Arc post-graduate program, Los Angeles – Xavier Veilhan, artist.
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!