The Bet of the Living

TEAM PORTRAIT

VIDEO (by the team)

INTERVIEW
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1. How did you form the team for the competition?
Our team was born from a group of friends met at the Architecture School of Paris La Villette. We are  transdisciplinary at heart as we come from various practices : landscape agency, architecture agency, digital project in culture institution, coordination of a community space. The Europan competition was a good opportunity to challenge our prospective and growing ideas with a concrete situation and the feedback of a jury.

2. How do you define the main issue of your project, and how did you answer on this session main topic, Living cities?
One of the main issues we wanted to tackle here was how can we reverse the extractive logic which left unerasable marks on the social, economical and mental space by taking advantage of a strong heritage and revealing a fertile ground of local richness. As a starting point, we tried to create opportunities for every being already present on the territory to engage with a thought-provoking approach proposing to switch the current outlook Doriginies /Pont de La Deûle may trigger for a more desirable shared future. We understand by “living cities”:
•    An environment which involves and takes into account all the inhabitants, humans and non-humans, and especially the ones who are too often unheard, by creating instances and spaces amplifying their voices.
•    Opportunities at different scales for its inhabitants to subsist and eventually prosper.
•    A meeting place for joyful encounters, eventful gatherings celebrating diversities.
As a framework to “living cities”, we imagined a site-specific and hands-on methodology enabling local actors to design new public policies leading towards a thriving environment. This method is based on a card game where players around the table represent different groups of postures : experts, political representatives, human and non-human users.  All together, they imagine scenarios of a future where no one's needs are neglected. Here, the cards are artifacts embodying concrete steps to reach shared visions, embodying the diversity of point of view and mostly the ones that are hardly represented.