At the initiative of the Comité Grande-Armée, PCA-STREAM delivers "Grande-Armée 2030", a strategic vision for reintegrating the Avenue de la Grande-Armée into the urban dynamic of Paris's historic thoroughfare and adapting it to the challenges of the 21st century city.
Well-being
The “Champs-Élysées — history & perspectives” study
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The Champs‑Élysées, History & Perspectives exhibition presents the study conducted between 2018 and 2020 at the behest of the Comité Champs‑Élysées by PCA-STREAM in collaboration with some fifty researchers, historians, scientists, engineers, artists, and economic and cultural actors from France and abroad. It traces the development of “the most beautiful avenue in the world,” analyzes its current usages, and proposes a vision of its potential evolutions in response to the challenges this area of the city faces in the present day. The Champs-Élysées is becoming a collective space to experiment with the development of a sustainable, desirable and inclusive city by 2030 through focusing on four main strategic priorities: reducing the impact of urban mobilities, rethinking nature as an ecosystem, seeking new uses, and the use of data for measurement and regulation.
“ 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.
8 Laborde — Gide Loyrette Nouel
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PCA-STREAM has restructured the Pépinière military barracks to create the new Gide-Loyrette-Nouel law firm headquarters. Designed as a sign of the firm's renewed way of working, it emphasizes teamwork and exchange, with a focus on horizontality, transparency and hospitality.
52 Champs-Élysées
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PCA-STREAM’s restructuring of 52 Champs-Élysées, the former Virgin Megastore, contributes to renewing the image and attractiveness of the Champs-Élysées. The imposing Streamline Modern Art Deco building gains new coherence thanks to a magnification of its architectural style and a clarification of its program. It will host a Galeries Lafayette department store, high-end offices, and an exceptional garden restaurant overlooking Paris.
32-34 Marbeuf
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In the heart of the Golden Triangle district, at 32–34 Rue Marbeuf, PCA-STREAM is reinventing the iconic Citroën dealership from the 1930s for Gecina, restored to its former glory with rejuvenated original architecture, innovative workspaces, and a full-fledged hanging garden on terraces that open out onto Paris.
8 Penthièvre
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PCA-STREAM is conducting the heavy restructuring of a real estate complex designed in the 1960s, tackling the obsolescence of an architecture that offers low-quality spaces in light of the new expectations of businesses. The façade is modernized and realigned on Rue de Penthièvre, and a new wing is formed at the end of the parcel, opening on a vast garden at the heart of the block. The intervention combines densification and the upgrading of workspaces, which are equipped with sunny, green terraces.
Examine the past to fix the present
Professor of Social Science and Director of the Institute for Public Knowledge at the University of New York, Eric Klinenberg looks back into the impact of the Chicago Health Wave of 1995. By using a social and urban autopsy, he reveals that it is the lack of social infrastructure that underlies the effects of the disaster.
The language of forests
The anthropologist and author of How Forests Think (University of California Press, 2013) recounts his Amazonian experience among the Runa people in order to convey to our Western minds the idea of a language that can go beyond words and symbols. A language that connects the beings of the forest, both human and non-human. A language that we seem to have forgotten…
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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