L'Enfant, la Ville et le Ruisseau - The Child, the City and the Stream

TEAM PORTRAIT

VIDEO (by the team)

INTERVIEW
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1. How do you define the main issue of your project in relation with the theme “Living Cities Imagining architecture taking care of the milieus”? And in which way do you think your project can contribute to an ecological and/or social evolution?
The "Living City" brings to mind an urban production that is no longer synonymous with fractures but with cohesion between the human and non-human entities that form the territorial ecosystem. In order to highlight the richness of the relationships that precede our intervention, we have based our thinking on the already-existing: equipment, cultural, social and economic systems.
The figure of the child, at the center of our discourse, embodies the hope we pin on the already-existing. The child represents both the vitality of the city - life finds a way, as Dr Ian Malcolm would say - and the vulnerability to which he is exposed. Children are the keystone that guarantees the balance of the area. As such, the attention and care they receive extends to all the entities with which they coexist.
From a programmatic point of view, adopting a child's perspective allows us to rethink the hospitality and accessibility of urban spaces. Thinking about the city from a child's perspective means designing a city that is safe, walkable, refreshing and entertaining. It also means working to preserve the memory of the territory, passing on its heritage, its memory and its traditions, in order to develop a relationship of mutual care between the inhabitants and the hosts.
The precepts of universal design - here applied to children - represent a fundamental paradigm shift. A chain is only as strong as its weakest link: the same applies to urban ecosystems. Paying attention to the most vulnerable entities therefore means ensuring the city's resilience; making it more lively, but also more liveable!

2. How did the issues of your design and the questions raised by the site mutation meet?
Over the next decade, the territory will undergo a profound urban change. The Parc des Aygalades, a future green lung of metropolitan importance, and the accompanying development projects will create a new land dynamic. The aim of this future centrality is to transform a mineral area into a space for refreshment and leisure, at the heart of a network of soft and active forms of transport.
The core of our project is to anticipate these changes and, above all, to ensure that they are accepted by the local population. We propose to support this emergence but to leave the control of its use in the hands of those who shape the area on a daily basis. Each of our proposals - which criss-cross the area in a kind of urban acupuncture - are affordances that local residents will be able to activate and reinvent.
What's more, the prism of childhood allows us to take an open and benevolent approach to a harsh territory. In this way, our project aims to resolve the paradox between the unalterable need to deal with what already exists and the desire to renew the conception - both programmatic and cognitive - of the territory. It is from this conundrum that we have set out to ensure that our interventions - however frugal - have a positive impact. Therefore, our proposals (whether graphic, political or built) are designed to be as accessible as they are powerful.

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