News

Nose to nose with the world

19 May 2024

Never once has Sissel Tolaas, Norwegian artist, chemist, linguist and researcher, uttered the word “perfume”. For the past twenty-five years, she has been collecting, inventing and breathing new life into smells, refusing to be part of the world’s aseptisation. Through her olfactory installations, she invites us to sense reality, its geography and its temporality. Most recently, she has recreated the smell of Pompeii, between sensory experience and memory of the past.

Downscaling energy

16 May 2024

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.

Inauguration of Versailles' new Tourist Office

6 May 2024

PCA-STREAM, the City of Versailles and Versailles Grand Parc are proud to inaugurate the new Versailles Tourist Office! In the run-up to the Paris Olympic and Paralympic Games, the new tourist office is designed to welcome millions of tourists to the town and its château, while enabling them to discover the wealth of cultural attractions Versailles has to offer. In dialogue with a contemporary garden by landscape architect Nicolas Gilsoul and a sculpture of Molière by artist Xavier Veilhan, PCA-STREAM reinterprets the classic figure of the pavilion with a sober, minimalist building that combines modernity and classicism with a low-carbon ambition.

The art of artificial life

2 May 2024

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.

The melody of the living

26 April 2024

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.

Issue 01 of Stream Voices 10 is out!

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

Architecture: the Centre Pompidou moves to Massy!

Le Point

21 April 2024

Watch the replay of the "STONE" conference

17 April 2024

The use of stone in construction declined during the 20th century. Today, its return is acclaimed for its qualities: inertia, durability, low-emission processing, local presence… with what techniques and applications in 2024? Introduction to the series by Elisabeth Bouchaud, materials physicist and playwright. With Cyril Pressacco, architect and co-founder of the Barrault Pressacco agency, Denis Macrez, artist, Ana Hedan, Director of Prescriptions at Rocamat and Paul Vergonjeanne, doctoral student in architecture.

Displaced villages, uprooted populations

9 April 2024

  Moussa Belkacem is a PhD candidate in architecture at the OCS (Observatory of the Suburban Condition) laboratory of the Paris-Est Architecture, Cities & Territories School. His work focuses on the displacement of villages in Europe between 1945 and 2045. He examines projects to relocate urban areas that are bound to be destroyed, and stresses the need to consider the links between demolition and reconstruction, in order to better accompany these uprootings.    

Experimenting with environmental art

29 March 2024

Using scientific facts as artistic material, Dutch artist Thijs Biersterker seeks to emotionally connect the public to global questions, to inspire a desire to take action. He uses technology, in particular AI, as a medium. His immersive installations highlight the intelligence and communication systems of plants: thus creating a bridge between living beings.

‘My quest to “re-enchant” the Champs-Élysées’

22 March 2024

Story-telling as a meta skill

14 March 2024

Claudia Ferrazzi, former government advisor on culture and audiovisual affairs, aims to put the artist back at the heart of the city by bringing together disciplines and industries. Founder of VIARTE, she uses art to support the implementation of new management methods. By adopting a narrative rather than a medium-based approach, she seeks to build bridges between the corporate world and artistic practice.

Artificial intelligence: how real estate is preparing for its revolution

LES ÉCHOS

12 March 2024

Artificial Intelligence and creation

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.

Université PSL inaugurates the Chaire Ville Métabolisme in partnership with PCA-STREAM

5 February 2024

The Ville Métabolisme Chair is an interdisciplinary research-action program launched by PSL University and the PCA-STREAM and supported by Groupama Immobilier, Artelia and PCA-STREAM. The Ville Métabolisme Chair relies on a collective dynamic to explore unprecedented research questions on the city, deliver courses and invent innovative training programs.

The new emlyon campus in Le Point

Le Point

29 January 2024

“Open to the city and totally connected to the city’s flows, the campus has been designed to spatially embody the school’s pedagogical project and meet the challenges of low-carbon architecture. Supported by ALTAREA and its subsidiary Cogedim, and designed by PCA-STREAM with Insolites Architectures, the campus will welcome students at the start of the 2024 academic year.

Stream Building shortlisted for the 2024 MIPIM Awards

28 January 2024

A manifesto project for PCA-STREAM, developed collectively with Covivio and Hines, Stream Building’s innovations reflect 15 years of research by the agency’s laboratory into the challenges of tomorrow’s city. Mixed in its uses and its wood-concrete construction, the project draws on the qualities of wood to limit its carbon footprint. Its modular, reversible framework makes it possible to change the building’s use without major structural intervention, making it a prototype of resilient architecture. Designed using a circular approach, Stream Building reuses resources produced in situ, while concentrating all the activities of dense urban life. For a meaningful, not just physical, presence in the city.

"Our offices were created to reinvent the profession of lawyer"

Le Figaro

22 January 2024

Reinventing the legal profession with an innovative workspace. For Le Figaro, Quentin Périnel met Frederic Nouel, partner and associate at the law firm Gide Loyrette Nouel, rehabilitated by PCA-STREAM in 2018.

Vulnerability as a inclusive principle

18 January 2024

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?

Artificial intelligence is infiltrating architecture studios

Le Monde

8 January 2024

Between dystopian imaginaries and the reinvention of practices, what is AI doing to architecture? “Artificial intelligence is infiltrating architects”: it was after organizing a series of “AI and Creation” conferences at the Stream Innovation Center at the agency and integrating/questioning AIs in all our professions that we discussed the subject with Regnier Isabelle for Le Monde. Philippe Chiambaretta, Etienne Riot, Léone-Alix Mazaud, Laélia Vaulot, Adrien Pointeau, Hugo Reichmann, Pauline Detavernier, Jasmine Léonardon: from architectural and urban research to 3D visualization, each field of expertise raises crucial questions for understanding the relationship between technology and creation. A must-read!

What science fiction says to the city

5 January 2024

Space is one of the great imaginary worlds of science fiction. By often depicting dystopian cities, authors sketch the contours of a desirable urbanity. Using science fiction as a field of investigation, Pierre-Antoine Marti, a PhD candidate in history at EHESS (School of Advanced Studies in Social Sciences), uses representations of the future as a dataset for prospective reflection on the interplay between science fiction and innovation.

Stream Voices 09 is out !

17 December 2023

In this new edition, discover the stories of artists, designers, curators, botanists, and landscape gardeners who are involved in prefiguring a shift in our relationship with the world.

Stream Building, winner of the 2023 Architecture Masterprize

11 December 2023

We are thrilled to announce that Stream Building is amongst the winners of the Architecture MasterPrize 2023 in the “mixed-use architecture” category!

Key handover ceremony — emlyon

5 December 2023

ALTAREA and its subsidiary Cogedim have today handed over the keys to the new emlyon business school campus, designed and built by the architectural firms PCA-STREAM and Insolites Architectures.