Architect, professor, and curator of the future exhibition “Paris Animal” [Animal Paris] at Pavillon de l’Arsenal, Léa Mosconi considers that architecture is fundamental to reconciling humans with their environment. An invitation to infuse poetry into places and lend a voice to the voiceless!
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Ashfika Rahman is a visual artist based in Bangladesh, who recently won the Future Generation Art Prize awarded by the PinchukArtCentre in Ukraine. Faced with the overwhelming power of information systems that are serving dominant narratives, she is working on creating alternative medium of expression, giving their voice back to marginalized communities in her homeland, particularly women. Through her art, Rahman questions myths, folk tales and widely spread prejudice that are still shaping our cultures and legitimating violence, adopting a contemporary and feminist lense. We met with her to discuss her recent work, Behula These Days where she brings together ancient crafts and new techniques to share the poignant and heart-wrenching experiences of women living in one of the most floodprone areas in Bangladesh.
Andrew Freear runs the Rural Studio program at Auburn School of Architecture (USA). He believes that schools of architecture have an ethical responsibility to train citizen architects who are locally committed to concrete projects and experientially connected to contexts and places. To design an inclusive city, the Studio adopts an experimental field approach, combining analysis of the territory’s endemic problems, understanding of residents’ needs and new construction techniques. Read the full interview published in STREAM 05!
In this exclusive interview, Björn Geldhof, director of the PinchuckArtCentre in Kyiv, looks at the evolution of the centre’s cultural programming since the outbreak of war in Ukraine. From an institutional space whose primary role was to open up the country to the world, the centre has evolved into a platform for committed and activist research, carrying the voice of Ukraine throughout Europe. By using art to document the conflict, the PinchukArtCentre uses a factual approach to raise awareness in the spheres of opinion and decision-making, thus affirming its role as the country’s ‘artistic arm’.
Raphaëlle Guidée is a specialist in narrative representations of economic, environmental and societal collapse. For over 10 years, she has analyzed the narratives surrounding Detroit’s bankruptcy in order to understand how an apparent ruin of capitalism can inspire discourses of domination or resistance. In La ville d’après : Détroit, une enquête narrative [The Aftermath City: Detroit, a narrative investigation] (Flammarion), rather than focusing on fictions, she seeks out testimonies and concrete stories, believing that modern times don’t need new narratives. We simply need alternative narratives. Read the transcription of her podcast below.
In urban planning and geography, the concept of metabolism is frequently discussed. This organicist metaphor likens a territory to a body, traversed by flows of materials and energy that link it to its environment. From a quantitative perspective, these flows can be measured over time and space to assess what a territory consumes, processes, and produces. However, a qualitative approach is equally crucial, examining the political and social trade-offs that shape urban metabolisms. With this in mind, we spoke with two researchers, Clément Dillenseger and Pierre Desvaux, who have explored the waste sector to analyze the socio-technical infrastructures that underpin metabolism and the imaginaries that shape its perception.
Read our discussion on the subject of generative AI with Raphaël Doan, a specialist in the sciences of Antiquity and author of the uchronia Si Rome n’avait pas chuté (If Rome hadn’t fallen), an essay imagining, with the help of AI, what might have happened if the Industrial Revolution had taken place under the Roman Empire. Through this experiment, fascinating possibilities for historical and archaeological research are outlined, as AI facilitates the processing of archives, the translation of lost languages and the deciphering of burnt texts.