Results by themes
2019
CHANGING METABOLISM
A new balance must be found between the relations, processes, flows and multiple forces of the sites that are large and contain a variety of agents (human and nonhuman) with long- and short-term cycles, and far-reaching ecological, economic and territorial implications.
Multiplying and connecting agencies
By defining and connecting the future agencies regarding air, water, soil, flood, programmes, activities and users, and new layers of functions, it may lead to a balanced growth on these sites. The final design will be something more than the sum of circular urban economies.
CHANGING METABOLISM
A new balance must be found between the relations, processes, flows and multiple forces of the sites that are large and contain a variety of agents (human and nonhuman) with long- and short-term cycles, and far-reaching ecological, economic and territorial implications.
From linear to circular economy
Characterized by a “linear”, obsolete or monofunctional economic approach, the site aspires to incorporate other resources and uses that create synergies and new potentials for interaction so that to create a circular system, catalysing flows and processes in a more integrative and efficient way.
CREATING PROXIMITIES
In the physical space of the city, but also at temporal and actors' scales, it is about establishing proximities between living and working both within residential areas and between residential areas and monofunctional production zones. It is also about rethinking the transition between high-speed metropolitan mobility and the low speed of neighbourhoods.
Third spaces in-between
A third space is a new space inserted between housing and production areas that can catalyse the transformation of current production cycles by creating synergies with urban territories and everyday life. It can be located in residual spaces within neighbourhoods, between existing monofunctional zones or emerge from recycled urban fabric.
CREATING PROXIMITIES
In the physical space of the city, but also at temporal and actors' scales, it is about establishing proximities between living and working both within residential areas and between residential areas and monofunctional production zones. It is also about rethinking the transition between high-speed metropolitan mobility and the low speed of neighbourhoods.
Interfaces and short cycles
The creation of interfaces contributes to the transformation of infrastructures of mobility, logistics, commerce or general services, by shortening production cycles, and generates new kinds of relations between residential and farming activities, between housing and services, between spaces and communities. Interface is a fluid space on incremental and adaptive processes, rejecting predefined master plans.
IMPLANTING
Ensuring the cities to be both productive and sustainable, they have to interlink resources, mobilities and conditions of fairness so that to create new dynamics according two aspects: productive milieus and productive uses.
Productive uses
Uses can become productive if they go beyond their own functional limitations: productive uses work as a trigger that can initiate dynamics of change in a way that transforms the surrounding environment. They are a response to a situation in which an absence of dynamics has led to a powerful "use-ambition", the demand for a credible programme, a catalyst for change that fits smoothly into the existing context.
IMPLANTING
The challenge for cities to be both productive and sustainable is to interlink resources, mobilities and conditions of fairness. There are two aspects to implanting new dynamics or reactivating resources such as urban farming and educational, research or creative forces: productive milieus and productive uses.
Productive milieus
This is the level where a natural, cultural, social or economic environment is implanted or revitalised symbiotically, by contrast with the architecture of objects or the urbanism of technocracy. So what is needed is to activate human and nonhuman resources and an ecosystem of partners, while at the same time paying attention to integrative values between nature and culture.