To inaugurate the new season of the Stream Innovation Center, our place for exploring the city of tomorrow, we are launching a series of conferences dedicated to artificial intelligence and creation. From October to December, artists, designers, architects, photographers and historians will be invited to share their experiences and debate the aims of this new tool. It's an opportunity to look back on 14 years of experimentation to move from theory to action, from the founding of Stream magazine to the inauguration of the City-Metabolism Chair with PSL University (Paris Sciences & Lettres). The profession has become an "explorer" of content and uses, as our friend Jean-Louis Cohen points out, whose words we listen to again with emotion.
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.
Philosopher, researcher and architecture school teacher Chris Younès advocates the implementation of “regenerative synergies” to learn to collaborate, respect the dynamics of nature and seek a new form of harmony – not simply aesthetic but also ethical and political – to improve the manufacture of inhabited environments. An attitude advocated by many architectural researchers!
In 2017, on the occasion of the Lyon Biennale d’Architecture “Processus & Pratiques”, Jean-Louis Cohen, architect, architectural historian and professor at the Collège de France, reviewed the evolution of architectural research from the early 20th century to the present day, when the profession is being redefined by the acquisition of an analytical as well as a project-based function.
Périg Pitrou is an anthropologist, CNRS Research Director at the Maison Française d’Oxford and head of the “Anthropology of Life” team at the Collège de France. He is Scientific Director of the City-Metabolism Chair, which links the agency with PSL University (Paris Sciences et Lettres). The aim: to identify how interdisciplinary collaborations can help overcome the challenges of building future urban worlds.
The researcher and data scientist explores and experiments with how architects can use artificial intelligence to enhance their practice. A foretaste of the AI & Creation conference series, for which he will host the fourth session (11/20/23), accompanied by American architects Daniel Bolojan and Andrew Witt.
“ Building cities, deconstructing methods. ”
“ Building cities, deconstructing methods. ”
Through the act of building, architect, experimenter and 2019 Grand Prix de l’urbanisme Patrick Bouchain questions public commissioning and puts it to the test of reality. His comments echo those of Philippe Chiambaretta in Faire la ville autrement, recently published by Flammarion.
Léone-Alix Mazaud, a CIFRE doctoral student (PCA-STREAM / École des Mines), here repositioned our definition of the “metabolic city” within a history of approaches to urban “metabolism”; a long-standing metaphor used in the study of urban systems, yet one that has been reconfigured over time.
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!