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 French underground and aerial landscape is made up of approximately 910,000 km of drinking water distribution pipes, and over 1.4 million km of power lines. Indispensable in our daily lives, they are nonetheless invisible and increasingly questioned in the light of ecological and technological challenges that are transforming our territories. But can’t these infrastructures be seen as a heritage to be maintained and cared for?
“ 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.
“ We cannot free ourselves from extreme projections, because we live in an extreme world. ”
“ We cannot free ourselves from extreme projections, because we live in an extreme world. ”
Space is one of the great imaginary worlds of science fiction. By often depicting dystopian cities, authors sketch the contours of a desirable urbanity. Using science fiction as a field of investigation, Pierre-Antoine Marti, a PhD candidate in history at EHESS (School of Advanced Studies in Social Sciences), uses representations of the future as a dataset for prospective reflection on the interplay between science fiction and innovation.
We have never collected so much data in cities. The public space is thus subjected to a real “dataification”. But how can we explain this massive capture? What is it about? And what does it tell us about our time? An inaugural lecture by Olivier Aïm, lecturer at Sorbonne University and author of Les Théories de la Surveillance, followed by an afterwork co-organized with Yourban, The Swarm Initative and The Good AI.
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.
Landscape is not just a matter of shapes and colors. It also emanates from the sensitive perception of a sound environment, however urbanized it may be. This is what Sara el Samman defends in her diploma project, awarded by the Fédération Française du Paysage. Would La Défense be the same without the sound of heels on flagstones?
Hubert Beroche is the founder of the Urban AI think tank, dedicated to the field of urban artificial intelligence. He is the curator of the Eyes on the street lecture series, run together in partnership with the SCAI (Sorbonne Center for Artifical Intelligence), and explains here how urban AI can help us understand the city.
Stéphane Lemoine is an architect and urban planner. He recently published the book Mix Urbains, which questions the nature of urban travel. By analyzing flows at eight intersections around the world, he studies speeds, rhythms, interactions and trajectories to determine what makes these urban squares special.
François Taddei is a geneticist and co-founder, with Ariel Lindner, of the Learning Planet Institute (formerly known as CRI). Conceived as a school for the 21st century, the institute combines artificial intelligence and collective intelligence to reinvent ways of learning, teaching and doing research.
Claire Doussard is an urban planner and researcher in the field of urban development. She focuses on measuring urban metabolisms and comparing various types of urban fabric in order to define the most environmentally friendly forms and ways of operating. Reviews and perspectives that face a great difficulty: data collection!
Researcher Claire Lesieur works at the CNRS Ampère Laboratory on the Go Pro project, which applies a computational model developed for protein folding to urban environments. The shape-changing properties of proteins are put to use in an attempt to map out the opportunities for urban growth that don’t involve urban sprawl.
These days we are generating a lot of data simply by carrying our phones around and consenting cookies on websites. While some of the data collected can be accessed by researchers for social good, other data is being used to provide targeted advertisements. Companies buy and sell our data, what is currently lacking is a mechanism for individuals to get a grasp of where their personal data is being used and for what purpose. An article by Saulė Gabrielė, Nadia Leonova and Lukas Utzig, Urban AI’s Emerging Leaders. Discover the extended version, Who owns your data ?
Caroline Goulard is a data journalist and co-founder of Dataveyes. She turns collected data into digital experiences to make it more understandable for everyone. Thanks to new ways of visualization, it is now possible to understand a population’s needs and to develop services that anticipate new uses.
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?
Jérôme Denis is a research professor at the Center for the Sociology of Innovation at Mines ParisTech. He examines the invisible work required by data processing (including in urban contexts), as well as on an approach to maintenance grounded in care. The focus afforded to material fragility, far from stabilizing the condition of objects, becomes inextricably involved in their future.
What we are currently calling AI has, in fact, very little to do with intelligence, although it does indeed make use of tremendous memory capabilities and computing power. The leading figure of French robotics, Bruno Maisonnier, is engaged in the challenge of developing an AI operating like a brain, using very little energy and data, while also being capable of justifying decisions. Would this be an AI with self-learning capabilities?
The trend towards smart cities reintroduces a functionalist vision of the city, generating ever-increasing amounts of data. But how can the parts of urbanity that cannot be reduced to quantified data to be optimized be considered? Larissa Fassler seeks to make visible what forms the urban experience through sensitive mapping that reveals an overlooked city.
In this interview filmed at the AIA Architecture Centre in New York, Michael Speaks, Dean of the School of Architecture of Syracuse, talks about the Design Energy Futures program that focuses on low-carbon planning and products. It aims to analyse datas in order to conceive scenarios of plausible futures and thus offer a better planification for urban expansion.
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!