Search
|

The creation of value through architecture

  • Publish On 11 January 2017
  • Frédérique Monjanel

Within the context of the shift from public architectural procurement towards private procurement, the real estate branch of the financial group ING has stood out on a number of occasions by powerfully driving and creating unique architectural operations, while avoiding sidelining their qualities as real estate promoters. Frédérique Monjanel gives us some insight into her career, from her time working in the agency of Jean Nouvel to her current activities as Senior Developer for ING Real Estate. ING could be a testament to the trust that architects should grant their partners in the private sector, resulting in common strategies between clients and architects in the service of cities and their inhabitants.

(interview with Aurélien Gillier  and Christophe Le Gac)

Frédérique Monjanel is the head of real estate development for VINCI Construction France since 2011.

How does one go from architectural design, working with Jean Nouvel, to real estate development for an international firm?

I joined Jean Nouvel’s agency in 1987, where I began working on the project for the Onyx center for culture in Saint-Herblain with Myrto Vitart. After that I participated in the call for tenders for the Centre des Congrès in Tours, that we ended up winning. We had a lot of similar projects coming from public procurement, and then the agency went into a nose dive. The structure had grown too quickly and there were too many teams, which led at one point to a big cash-flow problem and a significant management problem.

In 1994, Jean Nouvel left to pursue new horizons with a new associate. It was at that time that I began to work with ING on various projects, in particular a project in the Czech Republic, initiated by an encounter between Paul Koch and Jean Nouvel. We thus began to work with private, international procurement. In the beginning it was Paul Koch, ING and Jean Nouvel who suggested a strategic urban study on the city of Prague.

Opening on contemporary practices

The response provided by Jean Nouvel was more a vision of city renewal than a classic urban study, thus allowing a private promoter to directly visualize zones that had added value and those that could be potentially developed. 

Bibliography

explore

Vidéo

Artificial Intelligence in the creation process

Justine Emard, Nicolas Bourriaud, Pierre Pauze

Vidéo

Artificial Intelligence in the creation process

AI is a new form of intelligence whose development is stirring up concerns and dystopian fables. Far from replacing human intelligence, AIs are emerging as new tools to be trained, controlled and shaped to achieve the desired result. For the artist, photographer, architect, film-maker, musician or illustrator, AIs become an agent with which to collaborate, resulting in co-creation. Inaugural lecture of the “AI and Creation” series at the Stream Innovation Center.

Discover
Podcast

“ What will Paris be like under 50°C? How can we postpone this scenario and be better prepared for it? ”

Paris at 50°C

Alexandre Florentin

Podcast

“ What will Paris be like under 50°C? How can we postpone this scenario and be better prepared for it? ”

Paris at 50°C

Our dense, mineral-rich capital is ill-suited to the extreme heat we’ll increasingly have to cope with. So what adaptation strategies can we implement? This is what we asked to Alexandre Florentin, Paris councillor responsible for resilience and climate issues. He chaired the “Paris at 50 degrees” mission, which delivered its report a few months ago: what fields of action for architects and urban designers?

Discover
Vidéo

The art of artificial life

Justine Emard

Vidéo

The art of artificial life

Justine Emard is a visual artist. Her installations use AI to understand the living, exploring the boundaries between organic life and artificial intelligence. Bee swarms, encephalographic recordings and prehistoric paintings become learning supports for algorithms that, contrary to dystopian imaginations, generate new supra-hyper-organisms.

Discover
Podcast

“ Bringing the artist back at the heart of the city. ”

Story-telling as a meta skill

Claudia Ferrazzi

Podcast

“ Bringing the artist back at the heart of the city. ”

Story-telling as a meta skill

Claudia Ferrazzi, former government advisor on culture and audiovisual affairs, aims to put the artist back at the heart of the city by bringing together disciplines and industries. Founder of VIARTE, she uses art to support the implementation of new management methods. By adopting a narrative rather than a medium-based approach, she seeks to build bridges between the corporate world and artistic practice.

Discover
Vidéo

Which architecture for the ephemeral?

Éric Mangion

Vidéo

Which architecture for the ephemeral?

Eric Mangion has been director since 2006, after managing the Frac Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur from 1993 to 2005. His research has long been focused on the artistic gesture of disappearance – in all its forms, from the alteration of the work to the disappearance of the artist. At the Villa Arson, he develops a program around ephemeral practices.  He develops here the link between his research topics – the disappearance, the ephemeral, in the art and more generally, in the culture – and the evolution of the architecture.

Discover
Article

Exploring methodologies to understand the living city

PCA-STREAM

Article

Exploring methodologies to understand the living city

Theoretical experiments around the concept of the “metabolic-city” place living organisms at the heart of a new paradigm, encouraging a systemic approach. In urban and architectural practice, what tools are available to measure metabolism? Pauline Detavernier, Doctor in Architecture and Research and Development Project Manager at PCA-STREAM, examines existing measures of the life cycle and urban metabolism to outline a methodology.

Discover
Article

Experimenting with environmental art

Thijs Biersteker

Article

Experimenting with environmental art

Using scientific facts as artistic material, Dutch artist Thijs Biersterker seeks to emotionally connect the public to global questions, to inspire a desire to take action. He uses technology, in particular AI, as a medium. His immersive installations highlight the intelligence and communication systems of plants: thus creating a bridge between living beings.

Discover
Vidéo

Nose to nose with the world

Sissel Tolaas

Vidéo

Nose to nose with the world

Never once has Sissel Tolaas, Norwegian artist, chemist, linguist and researcher, uttered the word “perfume”. For the past twenty-five years, she has been collecting, inventing and breathing new life into smells, refusing to be part of the world’s aseptisation. Through her olfactory installations, she invites us to sense reality, its geography and its temporality. Most recently, she has recreated the smell of Pompeii, between sensory experience and memory of the past.

Discover