Stream Voices 01
Eager to share more generously the fruits of its collaborations and research, PCA-STREAM publishes STREAM VOICES, a digital research and innovation magazine that explores the making of the metabolic city.
“ Building the City, Deconstructing the Method. ”
“ Building the City, Deconstructing the Method. ”
Building the City, Deconstructing the Method
Through the act of building, architect and Grand prix de l’urbanisme 2019 laureate Patrick Bouchain reconsiders public procurement and puts it to the test of reality. He outlines his experimental Université Foraine project of an itinerant university promoting open, citizen-centric programming. Read transcript A PCA-STREAM production Coordination: Jasmine Léonardon Editing: Mattéo Caranta Music: Alexandre Desplat
Care & repair for the urban future
In the current climate of instability, new ways of thinking and acting are being considered. Among them are two attitudes of care for the living and the non-living. The planning of cities and territories is the privileged field of application of these concepts, symbols of a profound reconfiguration of our relationship to the world.
Designing a façade like a membrane
How can a building’s energy balance be maintained as a living organism would? The search for solutions has come to the forefront of contemporary concerns, with a view to finding a way for architecture to self-regulate its energy consumption based on uses and the fluctuations of the environment. One of the first surfaces concerned is the building’s façade, which is very similar to the material envelope of a body or the membrane of a cell: an interface between an interior that must be kept in balance and an exterior that is subject to variations the interior must be protected from. Much is at stake in the case of high-rise buildings. The double-tower high-rise “The Link,” which will emerge in La Défense in 2025, is typically subject to various constraints and challenges. To optimize user comfort, an ideal balance must be found between two paradoxical factors: the importance of daylighting and protection against exterior heat.
“ Approaching the world in all its complexity. ”
“ Approaching the world in all its complexity. ”
The construction of collective intelligence
La Fabrique de la Cité is a think tank dedicated to urban innovations headed by Cécile Maisonneuve, who emphasizes the importance of triggering forms of collective preparation in large construction projects. She envisions a new humanism taking shape thanks to disciplinary mixing. Read transcript A PCA-STREAM production Interview : Philippe Chiambaretta Coordination: Jasmine Léonardon Editing: Mattéo Caranta Music: Alexandre Desplat
When Architecture Conveys a Narrative
Architect, professor, and curator of the future exhibition “Paris Animal” [Animal Paris] at Pavillon de l’Arsenal, Léa Mosconi considers that architecture is fundamental to reconciling humans with their environment. An invitation to infuse poetry into places and lend a voice to the voiceless!
An Attempt to Drain Places
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.
Caring for the relational city
Geographer and Director of the École Urbaine de Lyon, Michel Lussault brings attention back to the forefront of urban planning, via the One Health concept. He thinks through the pandemic, which accelerated the dematerialization of human interactions, inviting us to ponder which relations should absolutely be protected.
Revaluing vulnerability
Sandra Laugier is a professor of philosophy and gender studies specialist. She views vulnerability and care as the key to a revolution in ethics and governance. Environnement, women, and “social invisibles” are part of the same struggle.
AI Doesn’t Replace Architects But Supports Them
Researcher and data scientist Stanislas Chaillou investigates how AI can enable architects to support and enhance their practice. A small sampler of a new book published by Éditions du Moniteur in March 2021.
Reversing the image of the world
The historian of science recently co-edited, with Emanuele Coccia, the collective work Le cri de Gaïa, penser la Terre avec Bruno Latour. Here she opens the way to an unprecedented exploration, that of a “New New World” that disrupts the codes of cartography and learning.
A global city for the Living
Yona Friedman granted us one of his last interviews before passing away in December 2019. In this unpublished video, he questions centralization and urban density and envisions the future as the establishment of a diffuse “global city,” a position that resonates deeply in the present context.
Training Citizen Architects to Serve a Community
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.
Collaborating with situations
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.
Design: Reparation
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?
From "Mediance" to Places
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.
An Attempt to Drain Places
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.
Maximizing reuse, minimizing transformation
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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stream voices
Eager to share more generously the results of its collaborations and research, PCA-STREAM publishes STREAM VOICES, its online magazine!
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