L'Amateur

TEAM DATA 

Team Representative: Julien Boidot (FR) – architect urbanist; Associates: Mathieu Holdrinet (FR), Arnaud Ledu (FR), Émilien Robin (FR) – architects urbanists 

L'amateur – bolehoro, 68 avenue du Général Michel Bizot, 75012 Paris – France 
+33 6 48 48 73 30 – contact@lamateurfosses.fr

See the complete listing of portraits here
See the site page here

^{At the back: J. Boidot and A. Ledu. At the front  : M. Holdrinet and E. Robin}

INTERVIEW

1. How did you form the team for the competition?

We have known each other since 2006. We created a common studio together in 2010 to regroup our different activities. This place is not only a working tool but also a real exchange and experience-sharing place. It favours emulation and welcomes the current and future collaborations. It promotes the pooling of thoughts on different topics at different scale. Europan forms a new opportunity to gather and use the respective experiences that we have built up over time.

2. How do you define the main issue of your project, insisting on how you answered on this session main topic: adaptability and urban rhythms?

A passionate interest is driving the Amateur. He is looking forward to sharing his culture and knowledge to create high quality architecture in contrast to an ever-growing consumerism that eliminates originality. Our approach establishes a local co-production between builders and beneficiaries to pull out of the passivity created by the consumption system. The innovation of our proposal is immaterial and based on people gathering. Its goal is the production of a developed, adapted and local heritage emphasizing on exchanges and connections between all the players involved. This system requires the sharing of skills and power between the expert and the citizens. The suggested economical model uses cooperative legal status ready to set up: SCIC (Sociétés coopératives d'intérêt collectif, i.e. cooperative enterprises serving the general interest) and SCOP (Sociétés coopératives et participatives, i.e. cooperative and participative enterprises). This universal approach is a non-interventionist process and is versatile for diverse territorial contexts.

3. How did this issue and the questions raised by the site mutation meet?

The village of Fosses is facing an issue that is well-known by a lot of suburban villages: how to develop and transform in the context of unpredictable, fast and ever-growing urban sprawl? Adaptability thus becomes a necessity. To answer the question, it is essential to think and establish new production systems before any formalization. This was the line for our project. 

4. Have you already treated this issue previously and could you present some reference projects that inspired yours?

For Europan 11, we realized a project called “Plan the future… towards a strategy of availability” for the Belgian site of Sambreville. Our proposition was an alternative production based on being aware of the opportunities of the pre-existing heritage rather than a study focussed on a limited place for an immediate result. 

5. Today –within the era of an economic crisis and sustainability– the urban-architectural project should reconsider its production method in time; how did you integrate this issue in your project?

Our approach is by itself a process project. The full title of our study is: “The Amateur … makes the unpredictable possible.” It is therefore not a formal and interventionist answer but a new production system allowing several unpredictable scenarios for a gradual and well-thought-out sprawl.

6. Is it the first time you have been awarded a prize at Europan? How could this help you in your professional career?

We received the Honourable Mention for the study of the Europan 11 Belgian site of Sambreville. A Europan-awarded innovative approach offers credibility with our daily interlocutors. They can therefore understand the new possibilities and interests that we, all together, have to change practices and production systems that are more and more inappropriate.