PCA-STREAM has won the competition for the extension of the Bobigny courthouse by designing a building with a balanced monumentality, reaffirming without excessive theatricality the sacredness of justice. The new courthouse will offer a functional and exemplary building, embodying the idea of a justice of care.
Care
Looking at the city from a gender perspective
For feminist geographer Leslie Kern, the urban environment is not neutral and stems from norms and power dynamics. She calls for a greater variety of urban user needs to be examined, and for physicality to be reintroduced into urban design. This translates into spatial and social interventions around mixed use considerations and taking into account marginalised voices in decision-making processes.
“ Capturing the conflict between the songs of nature and urban noise. ”
“ Capturing the conflict between the songs of nature and urban noise. ”
The melody of the living
Frédéric Jiguet is an ornithologist and professor at the Muséum d’Histoire Naturelle in Paris. In particular, he leads the STOC program: Suivi Temporel des Oiseaux Communs (Temporal Monitoring of Common Birds), which aims to understand the impacts of global change and the consequences of human activities on birds. We met him in situ, capturing the conflict between nature’s songs and urban noise.
Vulnerability as an inclusive principle
Emma Vilarem has a PhD in cognitive neuroscience, specialising in the study of social interactions. Co-founder of [S]CITY, she helps city planners integrate the psychological, emotional and social needs of residents into their projects. If the urban environment affects our brains and behaviors, couldn’t paying attention to the most vulnerable inhabitants improve the overall experience of the city?
Café Joyeux
Discover
True to its urban vision of a sustainable, desirable, and inclusive city, PCA-STREAM is involved in Café Joyeux’s vocational center for the rehabilitation of people with mental and cognitive disabilities on the Champs-Élysées. As part of this solidarity-based partnership, the studio has designed a pop-up venue on the “world’s most beautiful avenue”, showcasing its staff’s capacity to provide quality service. The interior space, which is adapted to the special needs of its staff, has a welcoming and colorful atmosphere, providing a warm and friendly venue. On the walls, Café Joyeux’s adventure is displayed, while the prep space is open to the public in order for all the staff to be made visible, as this is not just a place of meeting and interaction, but also an awareness-raising project.
The challenges of contemporary justice architecture
Courthouses constitute a complex program, part of an architectural, symbolic and political history that has yet to be fully explored[1]. A historical perspective, combined with an analysis of its contemporary issues, can nevertheless help us understand and question the tensions inherent to its architectural form.
Design with care, interview with Antoine Fenoglio and Cynthia Fleury
The encounter between philosopher Cynthia Fleury and designer Antoine Fenoglio offers an example of crossing practices around the idea of design with care, which allows a “design with purpose” based on the idea that fragility favors in a systemic way the practice towards environmental and social issues. With the concept of proof of care, experimentation itself becomes a form of care that leads to a reflection on modes of governance. Designers become integrators, diplomats between expertises, relying on their know-how in representation and prototyping.
Design with care
The co-founder of Les Sismo design agency, Antoine Fenoglio examines the integration of care ethics in design. In his collaborations with CNAM / GHU Paris and his hospital-based projects, he scrutinizes the procedures of restraint, which he seeks to shift towards care rather than seclusion.
The invisible labor of Data and Men
Jérôme Denis is a research professor at the Center for the Sociology of Innovation at Mines ParisTech. He examines the invisible work required by data processing (including in urban contexts), as well as on an approach to maintenance grounded in care. The focus afforded to material fragility, far from stabilizing the condition of objects, becomes inextricably involved in their future.
Organizing time, gaining access to space
Anthropologist and geographer Sonia Lavadinho has been working on issues related to sustainable mobility for the past fifteen years, and in particular on the way urban planning can improve walkability. She believes shifting from the “functional city” to the “relational city” will primarily stem from our relationship to time.
A Multilevel Approach to Care
The logic of domination is now broadly called into question and the pandemic crisis has indeed revealed the importance of everyday professions, giving new relevance to care ethics. These encompass a general attitude of care as well as an entire field of occupations and practices that are made invisible. Philosopher Sandra Laugier, who popularized the concept in France, traces its roots back to the feminist struggles that aimed to make another voice heard, in the opposition between ethics centered on good and evil, which are rather male and highly valued, and ethics centered on responsibility, which tend to be female and discredited. Care thus offers a systemic framework that makes it possible to take into account vulnerability and responsibility at all scales, from the household to the planet.
Design with care
As multidisciplinary practices based on attention to a variety of intelligences are developing in response to contemporary complexity, the encounter between philosopher Cynthia Fleury and designer Antoine Fenoglio offers an example of an intersection of practices enriching a common vision around the “Design with Care” approach. This allows for “design with intent” based on the idea that fragility can help systemically extend the design practice to environmental and social issues. With the “proof of care” concept, experimentation itself becomes a form of care that leads to pondering modes of governance. Within this multidisciplinary approach of care, designers become integrators and act as diplomats between different types of expertise, building on their know-how in representation and prototyping.
Talking Data
Caroline Goulard is a data journalist and co-founder of Dataveyes. She turns collected data into digital experiences to make it more understandable for everyone. Thanks to new ways of visualization, it is now possible to understand a population’s needs and to develop services that anticipate new uses.
AI doesn’t replace architects but supports them
Researcher and data scientist Stanislas Chaillou investigates how AI can enable architects to support and enhance their practice. A small sampler of a new book published by Éditions du Moniteur in March 2021.
Co-creating a learning society
François Taddei is a geneticist and co-founder, with Ariel Lindner, of the Learning Planet Institute (formerly known as CRI). Conceived as a school for the 21st century, the institute combines artificial intelligence and collective intelligence to reinvent ways of learning, teaching and doing research.
AI facing complex urban environments
Hubert Beroche is the founder of the Urban AI think tank, dedicated to the field of urban artificial intelligence. He is the curator of the Eyes on the street lecture series, run together in partnership with the SCAI (Sorbonne Center for Artifical Intelligence), and explains here how urban AI can help us understand the city.
Complexity, multiplicity, and adapatation within ecosystems
Contemporary architectural research is often fascinated by biological life but with an approach that goes beyond simple organic metaphors thanks to recent technological developments. Alisa Andrasek discusses the link between biology and her architectural practice, and her interest in the distribution of information in natural processes—a complexity that she tries to approach via big data. Her work in computational design is influenced by the convergence between information and materials, in an increasingly complex and open synthesis which enables it to go beyond the production of form and address the dynamic processes of matter itself. Alisa Andrasek is an architect, director and founder of the Biothing laboratory. She teaches at the Architectural Association of London.
Modeling the City Using Proteins
Researcher Claire Lesieur works at the CNRS Ampère Laboratory on the Go Pro project, which applies a computational model developed for protein folding to urban environments. The shape-changing properties of proteins are put to use in an attempt to map out the opportunities for urban growth that don’t involve urban sprawl.
Demystifying and Repoliticizing Urban Data
In the face of the promises of the prophets of artificial intelligence and the marketing of those major economic players promoting the smart city as a solution to urban ills, Jérôme Denis and David Pontille remind us of the irreducible materiality and fragility of cities. Demystifying what they perceive as a form of “neopositivism” of data, they point out that data doesn’t exist per se, and in fact must be generated and then maintained at a significant cost. As a result, data is never neutral and takes on a fundamentally political dimension. Understanding this framework leads them to promote a paradigm of maintenance and fragility, instead of the more common one of sustainability and resilience, when approaching urban realities.
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stream voices
Eager to share more generously the results of its collaborations and research, PCA-STREAM publishes STREAM VOICES, its online magazine!
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