Kintsugi, ou la stratégie des petits moulins

TEAM DATA

Team Representative: Daniel Garcia Lopez (ES) – architect
Associates: Paul Jacquet (FR), Jean Remy Dostes (FR) – urbanist architects; Louis Lazaro (FR), Eugénie Denarnaud (FR) – landscapers; Alegria Giovannini (CL), Dimitri Pagnier (FR), Nicolas Bayret (FR) – architects
Contributor: Simon Cristiano (FR) – architecture student

Atelier FUSO, HAME, 6 rue Philippe de Girard, 75010 Paris (FR)
01 85 08 35 30 – contact@atelierfuso.com – atelierfuso.com

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

^{D. Garcia Lopez, A. Giovannini, D. Pagnier, S. Cristiano, N. Beyret, J.R. Dostes, P. Jaquet & L. Lazaro} 

INTERVIEW
^{Click on the images to enlarge}

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

The voluntarily multi-disciplinary team (architects, urban planners, landscapers) was formed at the end of 2016 during our participation in the EDF Bas Carbone competition for which we were laureate in 2017. This prospective research competition allowed us to develop reflections and a common work dynamic that we wanted to extend.

2. How do you define the main issue of your project, and how did you answer on this session main topic: the place of productive activities within the city?

In a way, our project is a synthesis of our questions around two major issues:
- How could we go along with the transformation of the city heart as a whole through a reflection on the future of work and economic activities?
- How could we open in use private lands and create porosity towards the public space while using existing and easily accessible resources (technological, energy, logistics, organic ...)?
We make the assumption that the productive city of tomorrow will be multiple and will go far beyond the traditional categories: industry, services, craft ... In line with the research conducted by the philosopher Bernard Stiegler, we integrate the urgency of differentiating the employment which is automatized (47% of trades may disappear in the next two decades), based on consumption objectives and work which is on the contrary "desautomatized", provider of meaning, of unforeseen, and of "capabilities". This new productive city is shaking up the way to do things: new places and programs, widening learning places, strengthening links between workplaces and public spaces...

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

The site raises the question of the future of "urban and productive life" necessarily linked to existing urban forces: activities, equipment, economic sectors, public spaces and structuring infrastructures, etc. The "Petits Moulins" strategy is based on existing polarities (Hermès, Grands moulins, Thaddaeus Ropac gallery, city of the environment, schools...) and proposes a smooth adaptation of the current economic fabric in order to integrate the places and conditions of the new low-carbon and contributive economy while strengthening existing economies and vocations: luxury, crafts, culture and sport, etc. All resources (raw materials, tools, places ...) are integrated into the reflection process to create a true ecological and learning ecosystem. The strategy takes advantage of the typologies and potentialities offered by land and existing industrial architectural typologies: adaptability over time, generosity of spaces... The district of the station of Pantin can thus become a real urban laboratory of the new economy by taking advantage of the existing public lead dynamics: Est-Ensemble, pole Pleyel and Paris Nord-Est… Our proposal is committed to a negotiated and evolving urban planning, in which the various actors and programs are at the service of the users of the new productive city: circularity, learning, ecology, recycling, low carbon technologies, intelligent mutualisation...  

4. Have you treated this issue previously? What were the reference projects that inspired yours?

Not directly, but we had the opportunity to work in the context of the EDF Low Carbon Competition for the construction of a carbon neutral district by 2050. Through this project, we have studied questions that are contingent on those suggested by the productive city: circularity indices (organic matter, technological materials, energy, and water), the processes of production, transformation and recycling of matter in the city, new ways to approach logistics, leisure, landscape... In the same way, the two sites, by their positions raise the question of monofunctional lots soon becoming obsolete, and the way urban forms will adapt to the centralities of tomorrow.

5. Urban-architectural projects like the ones in Europan can only be implemented together with the actors through a negotiated process and in time. How did you consider this issue in your project?

The Kintsugi project proposes a strategy and a global intervention. It frames an "attitude" and a series of invariants. This way of doing things makes it possible to leave a large space for the negotiation over time and the evolution of an urban system that is complex in nature. Far from being a set of closed solutions, the Kintsugi project acts in parallel on the constitution of a network of public spaces, the setting up of logics of aggregation and exchanges between the programs or the opening of some sites to civil society. In contrast to a functionalist posture, the Kintsugi project proposes to bring together certain key functions: distribution, training, storage, logistics, transformation... in a virtuous logic: reduction of carbon emissions, increase in the circularity of resources, mutualisation of needs , social interactions ... These objectives require a commitment from each actor to recognize the value of current know-how but also the possibilities allowed by the new ecological, digital, etc., their potential for innovation and creativity. All the existing players: Renault, Peugeot but also the City or the SNCF are parts of the process.

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

Among the members of the team, Hame won two other Europan prizes: Saint-Herblain for E12 (with Chuck workshop) and Bordeaux for E13. The project in Saint-Herblain around the Preux-Cremetterie neighborhoods resulted in a 4-year urban programming study. It has clearly enabled Hame to be constituted as a practice but also to enrich its urban reflections: metropolitan registration, metamorphosis of a garden city, reconquest of public spaces, etc.