PCA-STREAM was tasked by Groupama to design an innovative tower that will renew the image of La Défense. Revisiting the model of the traditional tower, The Link is emblematic of the transformation of working practices and a new relation to the city. Its morphology in two wings connected to one another with platforms called “links” allows the tower to provide spaces that foster interactions and collective intelligence, and gives an unprecedented place to nature in a high-rise building.
Energy
“ How are territories coping with reduced energy capacity? ”
“ How are territories coping with reduced energy capacity? ”
Downscaling Energy
How are territories coping with reduced energy capacity? Five researchers presented their work at the Downscaling Energy study day organized at the agency by the Labex Futurs Urbains’ City and Energy working group. Research topics included Beirut, the impact of Hurricane Irma on the French island of Saint-Denis, resource management in the Middle Ages, the 1973 oil crash and the current environmental crisis.
emlyon business school
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At emlyon’s upcoming Gerland campus, which is slated to welcome its inaugural students in 2024, we’ve arranged the buildings around a spacious interior street and a spectacular central hub—Cœur Battant, the “beating heart” of the campus—where daily activities and key school events will converge. Every element is designed to foster interaction, serendipity, and collective intelligence. The campus opens itself up to the city, as well as to businesses and events. It is fully aligned with the environmental dynamics of the Gerland District as well, with its extensive garden and commonsense approach to sustainability, exemplified by its uncomplicated and efficient facades adorned with terraces and inviting outdoor walkways.
ShAKe
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ShAKe offers the Euralille district an atypical and convivial silhouette, with a spiraling planted promenade topped by a belvedere. PCA-STREAM is rethinking the office building, opening it up to the city and its residents, to adapt to the changing face of an increasingly open-plan working world. The form of the building-promenade is an invitation to live and share.
15-25 Amiral Bruix
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In the heart of the revitalized Porte Maillot district, PCA-STREAM revisits the Parisian modernist heritage and extends the city-nature dialogue. The agency’s intervention respects and enhances the architectural qualities of the original structure. On the north side, the façade grid is reinterpreted in a contemporary style inspired by its original rigorous layout. Designed as a balcony overlooking the Bois de Boulogne, it highlights the exceptional linear nature of the building with unobstructed views of the greater Parisian panorama.The new headquarters of Murex, the world leader in software for the financial markets, was designed above all to maximize interaction and collective intelligence, an essential function of a head office that has been reinforced by the health crisis. Spaces are streamlined and legible, and fluid circulation is ensured by a core of elevators and Chambord staircases on the first day. Employees meet and exchange ideas in a place conducive to informal dialogue.
Be Issy
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PCA-STREAM has designed an energy-positive office building in Issy-les-Moulineaux, a service sector cluster that is undergoing major transformation. We were driven to revisit the form of a tripod by the specific nature of the plot and our ambition for environmental excellence. This bold morphology opens the building on the city by freeing up green areas, and it optimizes the energy footprint whilst providing a functional work environment that is focused on improving the well-being of its users.
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!
Discover Stream Voices