22 April 2024
22 April 2024
For the past 3 years, PCA-STREAM has been publishing STREAM VOICES, the digital research and innovation magazine that explores the metabolic city. To share more generously the fruits of its collaborations and research, discover the new format, now published fortnightly! Contents of issue 1: — The art of artificial life” by visual artist Justine Emard — Paris at 50 degrees” by Alexandre Florentin, Paris councillor
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.
“ What will Paris be like under 50°C? How can we postpone this scenario and be better prepared for it? ”
“ What will Paris be like under 50°C? How can we postpone this scenario and be better prepared for it? ”
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?
6 March 2024
6 March 2024
AI at the heart of PCA-STREAM research! A look back at the five lectures in the AI AND CREATION series at the Stream Innovation Center. Image © June Balthazard & Pierre Pauze, Mass, 2020. Sculpture & 2-channel video, Courtesy of the Taipei Fine Arts Museum, Work initially commissioned by Hermès Horloger.
Stream is a transdisciplinary magazine founded by Philippe Chiambaretta in 2009. By bringing together philosophers, sociologists, artists, engineers, biologists, economists and architects, it crystallizes a kaleidoscopic, forward-looking vision of the urban issues it tackles. It’s a way of doing research, by confronting expertise, at the crossroads of knowledge!
Etienne Riot, urban planning researcher, and Pauline Detavernier, architecture researcher, are at the heart of applied research and innovation at PCA-STREAM. Together, they talk about the different facets of this research, from a CIFRE contract, to the setting up of a university chair project, to the subjects explored by the collaborators.
Bertrand Julien-Laferrière, former CIO of the Société Foncière Lyonnaise, collaborated with PCA-STREAM on the design of #cloud.paris. This building, located in the heart of Paris, combines work spaces that coincides with the aspirations of the creative classes and the employees of high value-added industries, which are turning away from the single-use business centers of the periphery. As part of the documentary “PCA-STREAM: From research to action”, we asked him to reconsider the development of this project. Here, he goes into more detail about the relationship between the client and the architect in the French context.
Périg Pitrou is an anthropologist at the CNRS and head of the “Anthropology of Life” team at the Collège de France. He is Scientific Director of the City-Metabolism Chair, which brings together PCA-STREAM and PSL University (Paris Sciences et Lettres). The aim: to identify how interdisciplinary collaborations can help overcome the challenges of building the urban worlds of the future.
Gilbert Emont is director of the Palladio Foundation, a think tank focusing on urban space founded in 2008, which promotes research and exchanges in real estate and urban planning, in order to better meet the challenges of urban space construction. He describes how the Foundation defines what the urban society is, and how the city and its builders must adapt to this paradigm shift.
Xavier Veilhan is a visual artist. He represents France at the 57th Venice Biennale. Since he has been collaborating with PCA-STREAM on a regular basis for a decade, we interviewed him for the documentary “PCA-STREAM: from research to action”. In this talk, he evokes his relationship to architecture, which he considers both as a constraint to the creation process and as a source of inspiration and reflection that nourishes his practice.
Episode 3/5 of the documentary “PCA-STREAM, from research to action” examines the question raised by STREAM 03 on the links between urbanization and preservation of natural resources in the so-called Anthropocene era, in which Man has become the dominant transformation force of the biosphere. How can we sustainably live on a finite planet? Based on a cradle-to-cradle dynamic, the Stream Building offers a concrete vision of what a metabolic building can be, producing and reusing its own resources. – In the documentary “PCA-STREAM, from research to action”, filmmaker Gilles Coudert takes his author’s perspective, a specialist in contemporary art and architecture, on the link between research and action at the heart of the practice of PCA-STREAM agency. He gives the floor to an international panel of researchers, creators and professionals associated with the work of the agency: philosophers, art critics, artists, investors, policy makers, users, etc. Three architectural projects, realized or in progress, are taken as case studies to illustrate the conditioning of the architectural form by this collaborative exploration approach: #cloud.paris (with SFL), the Stream Building (winner of the competition « Réinventer Paris » , with Eurosic) and Shake (Euralille, with Nacarat). Those projects embody the way in which a metabolic, open and innovative vision of the city takes shape through the exchange and creation of new synergies between actors and visions to move from urban utopia to concrete realization. A film directed by Gilles Coudert for the Lyon Architecture Biennial. A co-production PCA-STREAM and a.p.r.e.s. Production, 54 min, 2017. – With the interventions of: Nicolas Bel, engineer, specialist in urban agriculture, founder of Topager – Timothée Boitouzet, architect, entrepreneur, founder of Woodoo – Patrick Bouchain, architect and set designer – Nicolas Bourriaud, art historian, art critic and exhibition curator – Alain Bublex, artist – Thomas Camus, director of operations development at Eurosic – Philippe Chiambaretta, architect, founder of PCA-STREAM – Gilles Clément, landscape designer -Jean-Louis Cohen, architect, architecture historian, professor at Collège de France – Gilles Coudert, director, producer and publisher – Justine Culioli, assistant director of major projects at SFL – Clément Dirié, editor and art critic – Gilbert Emont, director of the Institut Palladio foundation – Julien Eymeri, strategy consultant and co-founder of Quartier Libre – Aurélien Gillier, publisher and designer, editor-in-chief of STREAM 02 – Bertrand Julien-Laferrière, former general manager of SFL – Thomas Lierman, CEO of Nacarat – Éric Mangion, artistic director of the National Contemporary Art Center Villa Arson – Ariane Michel, artist and filmmaker – Jean-Louis Missika, Deputy Mayor of Paris, in charge of town planning, architecture, the Greater Paris project, economic development and attractiveness – Yann Moulier-Boutang, economist and essayist, professor at UTC Compiègne and UTSEUS Shanghai – Pierre Musso, philosopher, professor at Telecom ParisTech – Julien Prévieux, artist – Julie Rouart, editor, editorial director of the art department at Flammarion – David Ruy, architect, director of SCI-Arc post-graduate program, Los Angeles – Xavier Veilhan, artist.
The episode 4/5 of the documentary “PCA-STREAM, from research to action” outlines the subject of STREAM 04 (which will be published at the end of 2017). This new issue explores the repercussions of the Anthropocene era. It proposes to consider a new paradigm for the living, seen as a continuum, to overcome the existing divisions between nature and culture, object and subject, living and non-living. The Shake building in Lille, on which a part of the neighboring park winds up and continues, is a concrete example of this new cycle of study. – In the documentary “PCA-STREAM, from research to action”, filmmaker Gilles Coudert takes his author’s perspective, a specialist in contemporary art and architecture, on the link between research and action at the heart of the practice of PCA-STREAM agency. He gives the floor to an international panel of researchers, creators and professionals associated with the work of the agency: philosophers, art critics, artists, investors, policy makers, users, etc. Three architectural projects, realized or in progress, are taken as case studies to illustrate the conditioning of the architectural form by this collaborative exploration approach: #cloud.paris (with SFL), the Stream Building (winner of the competition « Réinventer Paris » , with Eurosic) and Shake (Euralille, with Nacarat). Those projects embody the way in which a metabolic, open and innovative vision of the city takes shape through the exchange and creation of new synergies between actors and visions to move from urban utopia to concrete realization. A film directed by Gilles Coudert for the Lyon Architecture Biennial. A co-production PCA-STREAM and a.p.r.e.s. Production, 54 min, 2017. – With the interventions of: Nicolas Bel, engineer, specialist in urban agriculture, founder of Topager – Timothée Boitouzet, architect, entrepreneur, founder of Woodoo – Patrick Bouchain, architect and set designer – Nicolas Bourriaud, art historian, art critic and exhibition curator – Alain Bublex, artist – Thomas Camus, director of operations development at Eurosic – Philippe Chiambaretta, architect, founder of PCA-STREAM – Gilles Clément, landscape designer -Jean-Louis Cohen, architect, architecture historian, professor at Collège de France – Gilles Coudert, director, producer and publisher – Justine Culioli, assistant director of major projects at SFL – Clément Dirié, editor and art critic – Gilbert Emont, director of the Institut Palladio foundation – Julien Eymeri, strategy consultant and co-founder of Quartier Libre – Aurélien Gillier, publisher and designer, editor-in-chief of STREAM 02 – Bertrand Julien-Laferrière, former general manager of SFL – Thomas Lierman, CEO of Nacarat – Éric Mangion, artistic director of the National Contemporary Art Center Villa Arson – Ariane Michel, artist and filmmaker – Jean-Louis Missika, Deputy Mayor of Paris, in charge of town planning, architecture, the Greater Paris project, economic development and attractiveness – Yann Moulier-Boutang, economist and essayist, professor at UTC Compiègne and UTSEUS Shanghai – Pierre Musso, philosopher, professor at Telecom ParisTech – Julien Prévieux, artist – Julie Rouart, editor, editorial director of the art department at Flammarion – David Ruy, architect, director of SCI-Arc post-graduate program, Los Angeles – Xavier Veilhan, artist.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
stream voices
Eager to share more generously the results of its collaborations and research, PCA-STREAM publishes STREAM VOICES, its online magazine!