Stream Voices 02
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.
“ Every citizen on the planet is a gardener. ”
“ Every citizen on the planet is a gardener. ”
The gardener's intelligence
Gilles Clément coined the concept of the ‘planetary garden’ which invites everyone to take care of the Earth as they would a garden. Having all too often been confronted with the sheer ignorance of how ecosystems and the living world operate, he, therefore, proposes creating a Ministry of Knowledge to lift us out of the ‘Stupidocene.’ Read transcript A PCA-STREAM production Coordination: Jasmine Léonardon Editing: Mattéo Caranta Music: Alexandre Desplat
Dream of the Aerocene
In order to help us move beyond the Anthropocene, Tomás Saraceno, an Argentinian artist imagines a new era, the Aerocene. By mobilizing science-based tools, he proposes turning away from extractive and predatory behaviors in order to try and change our habits rather than the climate. With his recent work Aerocene Pasha, he achieved the most sustainable flight in history and revealed concrete alternative actions.
The challenges of timber construction in addressing the climate emergency
The construction sector accounts for one third of France’s CO₂ emissions. This environmental footprint can be reduced by using wood, but wood only stores carbon temporarily. The challenge of sustainable construction therefore lies in a comprehensive approach that includes forest management and the durability of buildings. No ‘woodwashing’ here, but some thoughts on mixed construction!
Organic design: towards new artefacts
Confronted with environmental challenges, designers are exploring new materials that could replace plastics. Options include biodegradable, renewable, biobased, and self-growing materials. Discover three prototypes.
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.
The future is in the forest
When speaking of architecture, do you consider the architecture of trees? The famous botanist and specialist of tropical forests reflects on the growth models of trees, and interplant communication, as well as his project to recreate 70,000 ha of primary forest in Europe.
Giving a sense to fiction
Designer Ramy Fischler looks back at the Sens-Fiction exhibition, produced as part of the Lille Métropole World Design Capital event. Noting a ‘breakdown of imaginaries,’ he proposes inventing new stories to figure out desirable futures. An online exhibition to be visited here
Reactivating heritage and the local neighborhood through art
Laure Colliex spearheaded the establishment of a residence for 200 artists in a high-rise slated for refurbishment. This temporary place of creation located in Clichy is conducive to collaboration between young artists using the surrounding area as a material.
Investigating, collecting, prefiguring: the case of Marseille's MuCEM
Denis Chevallier has headed MuCEM’s Research and Education Department since its inception. An ethologist and museum curator, he was tasked with prefiguring the new museum and ran many ‘collection surveys’ to inform its exhibitions, emphasizing objects to foster connections as is key in achieving a socially relevant museum.
Museums as generators of viewpoints
Though the virtualization of museums is a corollary of the health crisis, curator Nicolas Bourriaud insists on the importance of physically meeting artworks. He postulates that the museum institution cannot be fully transformed without inventing places for community life and experiences.
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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