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TEAM DATA

Team Representative: Adrien Coste (FR) – architect 
Associate: Guillaume Vienne (FR) – architect

74, Avenue Kléber, 59240 Dunkerque (FR)
+33 668759326 – adriencoste.architecte@gmail.com – etetet-europan14.fr

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

^{G. Vienne & A. Coste}

INTERVIEW
^{Click on the images to enlarge}

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

We have been working together for 7 years in Zigzag Architecture Agency whose founders are winners of Europan 1. The Europan competition is one of the rare architectural and urbanism competitions where the form is not over the reasoning. It is an opportunity for young architects to be actors of the thinking on the city and on the territory via the synergy of thousands of European teams. It appears to us as an appointment not to be missed. 

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?

Most cities are inherently productive, and successive industrial revolutions have profoundly changed them. One of the direct consequences of this productivity has been the pollution of cities. One of the major challenges of the 21^st century productive city is to associate productivity no longer with more nuisances but with more well-being. The development of cleaner technologies, a more responsible industry and an active pedagogy are among the most direct solutions. Our project and ... and ... and ... develops a learning rhizome where the amateur meets the professional, the researcher, and where the innovation is shown and explained giving the envy to everyone to learn and to undertake.
 

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

The productive city of Lille is a collection.
A collection of know-how, symbolized by five poles of excellence revolving around the city and radiating throughout the territory.
A collection of universities, innovative research laboratories and museums.
A collection of emblematic places of past and current productivity.
A collection of citizens' wishes, associations and entrepreneurial inhabitants eager to produce.
Collections.
They interact. Sometimes only between their entities, sometimes between them via a rhizome of connectors. A rhizome does not start and does not succeed, it is always in the middle, between things, intermezzo, intermezzo. The tree is filiation, but the rhizome is alliance, only alliance. The tree imposes the verb 'to be', but the rhizome has for fabric the conjunction 'and ... and ... and ...' (Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia, 1980, p.30) 

And ... and ... and ... is perhaps an inherent condition to the productive city: a space where the temporary and the error are allowed, where any project seems possible, the rhizome being independent and superior to the sum of the entities feeding it. Our project proposes to exacerbate this rhizome and to make visible the specific synergy of the European Metropolis of Lille. The site of Bois Blanc is crossed by two landscape frames which forge the landscape of the metropolis:
- The Entrelet of the Grand Canal and the arm of the River Canteleu form the Ilot Bois-blanc and the Citadel
- The Green Armature, a collection of structuring parks, landscaped strips and abandoned roads, crowns the heart of the city.

In the project and ... and ... and ..., these two urban vectors with spontaneous aesthetics and strong imaginary potentials become theaters and vectors of the productivity of the city.

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

In our previous projects and collaborations, the reflection was rather architectural. The Europan competition was an opportunity to confront at a larger scale the questions linked to the "Productive City". The SCOT 2030 (Shield of territorial coherence of the city of Lille Metropolis) was the foundation of our reflection. It takes stock of the current situation and highlights the main issues of planning and urban planning across the territory. It highlights the need to enhance the attractiveness of the metropolitan area. It also expresses the ambition to build an "eco-metropolis" that combines several major complementary objectives:
- A global conception of territorial development
- The implementation of the "intense city"
- The quality of the environment and the living environment
- Strengthening the attractiveness of the Lille metropolis
 

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?

We believe that an urban project is less and less an immutable project but rather a "process". We have therefore developed a process that ensures adaptability to the evolution of its context and gives participatory democracy as well as multiple opportunities for intervention, but also ultimately assumes the city as a building in permanent mutation. To do this, we have made available a "toolbox" to build the city of tomorrow for Lille's local authorities, namely:

- The plates "Admiral" : laboratories of new urbanities creating attractive contexts. These voids are the places of reception of the successive fantasies needed for the city;

- Water at the scale of the territory, the city, the neighborhood : by promoting the transportation of goods by waterway to supply businesses, artisans and businesses in the city;

- Finding synergies : by promoting the networking of university buildings, higher education institutions, research centers, centers of excellence with companies and craftsmen,

- Eco-Métropole : through the development of the green frame which crowns the city of Lille by the implantation of urban farm on this belt. 

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

For our first participation in Europan we had the honor of being winners in the city where we practice. This is an opportunity for us to be part of the urban and architectural reflection of the European Metropolis of Lille.