landscape & imagination
TRANSCRIPT
Landscape & Imagination
Jul i e Mart in, Sophie Pavio l , Frank Prungnaud et Françoise Very Ecole nationale supérieure d’architecture de Grenoble
Master Aedification-Grands territoires-Villes, laboratoire de recherche les Métiers de l’Histoire de l’Architecture, édifices-villes-territoires
The archi te c tural pro je c t as permanent revolut ion
In the logical tree which organises the thought of architectural project, it is about changing the first parameter. The territory, understood as system of transformation in act, as a living organism, must become the source of architectural project to organize really the thought by the environmental worry. It requires to take an interest potentially in all components of the territory for opposing at the lack of differentiation, recognizing yet visible specifics under the “metropolisation”. Thus, students are encouraged to think again an inside and outside of the city and to invent new "natures", plural and necessarily artificial, to structure durably the territory.
transformation, living organism, the culture of the vision, hypothesis, simultaneity
1 Thought of the project 1.1 the educated vision by the territory During a seminar of Master’s degree Aedification- Grands territoires-Villes1, Marco Assennato, italian philosopher, reminded us how from Vittorio Gregotti to Vittorio Ugo, as well as for Manfredo Tafuri, “the architecture is the culturally determined transformation of the environment and the landscape at different scales of the house, of the city and of the territory” (Assennato, 2011). This reminder reassured our way to organize the teaching of architectural project so that it would be really structured from environmental questions with the territory as first level of the thought of the project. This methodology of project ensued of a research methodology implemented during the first Interreg programm, produced by the Politecnico di Torino and the Ecole du Paysage de Versailles, whose results was published in 1997: Le Alpi, les Alpes (Comoli, Fasoli, Very, 1997).
1 The Master degree was created during the organisation of architecture’s studies in France : Licence, Master,
Fig.1, Phnom Penh 2563 , 2011, Water as territory: meeting
the Khmer rural heritage with urban cash economy, PFE However, there is not strict and linear approach between the work from laboratory of research Les Métiers de l’Histoire de l’Architecture, édifices-villes-territoires and the Master’s degree. By various progresses as researchers, professionals or teachers, of inductions in deductions, we was able to do the record that we thought firstly the project in its relation with the territory. We finally enunciated the necessary change to act in the logical tree that organizes the architectural project. Indeed, usually and implicitly, it is the relationship to "the city" that organizes the thought of project. We had come to formulate that "the city" was a modality of the territory and that the first level in the logical tree which organizes the
thought of project would be "the territory" (Very, 2012). It was not a linear process, there had been many steps, that we are able to relate today with hindsight. These are rather concomitant researches which come together and express themselves throughout results of projects and publications2. The first expression of the methodology, which was then only a desire to orientate a part of the Interreg research, was to propose the landscape as freeze frame from a system of transformation in act : the territory. We was abled thus to consider the territory as a living organism, source of architectural project. Little by little, we considered that there was two essential facets of the architecture, which came together into the question of “project”: the culture and the profession, the first one relating to the long term, the second one to constant and rapid social and economic transformations (Very, 2012). We began to work on a precise inspiration of the architectural culture, the culture of the vision. We were consolidated by the idea of "educated vision" found in Althusser, in a totally different context, as it is his preface to Lire le Capital (Althusser, 1965). Then, the organisation of the symposium in situ / de visu / in motu in September 2011 in Quebec with the University of Montreal, whose the publication is in progress, enabled us to structure this theme of research: "culture of the vision" (Very, 2007, Maumi, 2007, Simond, Paviol, 2009). This interest for the vision can seem contradictory with the decision to pass from "landscape" to "territory" for the thought of architectural project. Actually, it is exactly the possibility to operate two different conceptual levels which allows us to progress and to take into account “the perception and the temporality” as suggests the workshop 4 of the symposium suggests it. However, we don’t want to develop a process of planning but a process of project from the territory. And then, only territory planning tools can be possibly deducted. Indeed, our issue is an architectural thought that functions at the same time on very different scales and not an hypothesis of territory planning or an urban planning project. But an urban planning project can result then from hypothesis formulated by the architectural point of view, articulated on very different scales, from 25000° to scale 1:1 for example, but the thought works at the same time on different
2 Projects of first year master’degree being always for a institutional partner, the work of project communication is important. Issues of projects as results are then integrated to reflective processes of different works producted by the research laboratory, as Projects of end study from master’s degree.
scales and not successively by zoom effects. Indeed, if we insist in our teaching on the role of project as hypothesis, it is because the hypothesis status allows to involve the crossing of various stakeholders to advance in the precision of the project, in a shared way according to the elaboration. Otherwise, the aim of architectural project is not for us to realize necessarily many square meters, small actions can trigger important transformations (Very, 2008). From the question which was asked by the status of the Green Belt of Ouagadougou, we understood clearly that we had reached a milestone in our way of thinking the architectural project, in its teaching methods and in crossings between the research in laboratory and in master’s degree by the test of this in situ major action in February 20123.
Fig. 2, Ouagadougou, 2008, Green Belt, Price Tony Garnier
Académie d'Architecture Paris 2009
1.2 The project as process and the dynamic of the environment Lessons from the laboratory of research, but also from other horizons, all merged generations4, brought
3 To see the website www.ceinturevertedeouagadougou.fr and the thesis of Mama Awal H, “La Ville-village cntemporaine. Cas d’étude Ouagadougou, capitale du Burkina Faso” in the process of writing, directed by Maumi C, laboratory MHAevt ENSAG.
4 Crossings of international experiments : Italy, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Montréal, Madrid, Poland, Turkey, United-State of Amerci, interdisciplinaries, merged generations…
us to think the project as the start-up of a process and not as an end in itself. We consider that the concept of project no longer focuses on the shape as an outcome but on the number of links that it is able to generate at all scales questioning the territory. However, architectural shapes, obviously similar or same processes of projects, are able to serve very various objectives. The development of a project has need to a “driving force”, clear objectives, an ethics (Assenato, Very, 2011). This is why the “critic of the ideology” can become operating today5, not to guide methodological processes of project but to pronounce the framework of the architectural thought that moves it. Rhythms of transformations are multiple and are superimposed. All does not change at the same time. “Great ideas” die hard, such dead stars whose the light still reaches us. So, the urban project can be again presented as architectural aim. It suggests that the urban project still exists based on a morphological city organization, while from this point of view, it does not exist since the end of 16th century in Italy where this thought was born. The architectural ideal continues yet to enrol in an idea of “good city”, called again recently by the “sustainable city”, after the idea of cleaned city by the urban planning of 20th century. Between tools end the thought, there are often discrepancies that takes sometimes a long time to identify and to understand. So, the “sustainable” has not to be reduced at a technical question, otherwise it is a pure problem of “market”. The teaching in the Master’s degree tries to build methods and to give tools which lead up to reflect at conditions of possibility for “sustainable” territories and which question our current ways of doing. At the time when issues of mobility, density, hubs of life distribution on the territory are at the hearth of realities, it seems essential to bring into focus these issues to future architects. It is so that they be able no longer consider it as negative constraints, but as parameters of the project. Raised issues in terms of energy production, economy, have as a consequence that the range of necessary competences widens and the project requires an awareness constraints increasingly varied. Of course, in the practice, they should not remain “constraints”, but become a part of the arsenal of “matters” for project and fields in which the architect will draw to act.
5 cf. Manfredo Tafuri (1935-1994), founder of the Istituto di Storia dell’Architettura di Venezia
Fig. 3, Viviers , 2009, Sewlandscape, master1
1.3 Projects about the Rhône river To weave The Rhône river invites to develop a relative thought, giving the most attention at the presence of unbuilt and the impact of built. The diversity of these urban and “natural” landscapes (metropolis, vineyards, industrial inheritances, listed natural sites and diffused city...) obliges potentially to be interested in every parts of its territory as to try to weave them. This complicated, meticulous and patient relationship of material and immaterial datas is strategic to oppose the lack of differentiation, recognizing still visible specificities under the “metropolisation” of the river. So the thought of the architectural project changes of primary parameter. The territory of the Rhone river, understood as a system of transformation in act, as a living organism, becomes the source of the architectural project so that the thought could reallybe organized by the environnemental worry and it give a durable sense at its realisation. 2 The teaching While this first year of master’s degree, you ask a close territory, you constitute a way of looking and thinking which then applies to other territories and other issues. Students work consistently on great territories from which they have to build a strategic vision whose the architecture as edifice is a part. 2.1 The multiplicity of thought scales “at the same time” Having always “in front of eyes” the representation of several scales is the instruction for the posed problem in second year of master’s degree. In first year of master, the “framings” needed to the project thought are introduced in the work’s organization of the year, and also in tools of thought and of representation tested in seminar, formalised as conceptual mock-ups. For each semester, the workshop functions on a dual approach between the seminar being about the territorial analysis and the studio of project in which students develop their projects. The academic year is composed of two phases allowing an understanding of the territory the possible finest and a part of wide and adapted proposals. The way to work between different scales is staggered year-round with back and forth.
Fig.4 , Rhône downstream/Natural Park of Pilat,
2012, GAIA, master 1
2.2 The seminar of master 1, tools for the thought of the project Our educational proposal : to explore in turns representation tools of the geographers and of the landscaper : an approach which aims to distance the reality to objectivize it and the other which favors the proximity with the site. The cycle of master’s degree starts by a seminar in the form of workshop. It is for teaching to differentiate ways of thought from territory, by practicing to corresponding ways of representation.
Two conceptions presented separately, one stemming from the work of geographers, the other landscapers. A link makes it with the intervention of a visual artist, particularly by the introduction of a very effective tool : the conceptual mock-up. At first semester of master 2, in the work of project, a new exercise of conceptual mock-up is organized. In the end of the first year of master, for the presentation of projects, a graphic designer intervenes so that students try out different regular machineries of the professional life as tools of representation as driving force of project and as communication of project. In second year of master, the calendar of work for projects of end study organises times of report writing, of posters arrangement, of preparation of the powerpoint presentation in order to do awake of the importance of communication work. In first year, the topic of projects is always an “order” by one institution or several reunited institutions. Students are received on the project territory with their teachers for several days in order to get acquainted with the site and projects in progress. For important "renderings", important representatives of partner institutions are present. Conclusion Our method of project rests on the priority given conceptually to the thought of the territory. The figuration of physical and lived realities, with various scales of time and space, allows the formulation of a new collective imagination. This imagination, once shared, transforms the territory in inhabited landscape.The pertinence of this process is demonstrated to us by the manner whose, every year, stakeholders of the territory seize hypotheses proposed by our students to bringing out political projects.
Fig.5 , Rhône downstream/Natural Park of Pilat,
2012, Souce of sharing , master 1
Bibliography Althusser L, 1965, « Préface : Du « Capital » à la philosophie de Marx », in Althusser L, Rancière J, Macherey P, Lire le Capital, (ed.) François Maspero, Paris. Assennato M, 2011, Linee di fuga. Architettura, teoria, politica, (ed.) Due Punti, Palermo. Comoli V, Fasoli V, Very F, 1997, Le Alpi. Storia e prospettive di un territorio di frontiera. Les Alpes : histoire et perspectives d’un territoire transfrontalier, (ed.) Celid, Torino. Maumi C, 2007, La ville entre territoires mythiques et Physiques. La culture du regard en architecture, HDR Paris VIII. Simond C, Paviol S, 2009, Cinéma et architecture, La relève de l’art (ed.) Aléas, Lyon. Very F, 2007, « Interaction binaire multiple dans la conception architecturale », Scan07, Liège. Very F, 2008, interview by Martin J, in « Les meilleurs mètres carrés sont ceux que l’on ne construit pas », Gilles Marty exhibition, Maison de l’Architeture de l’Isère, Grenoble. Very F, 2011, « Pensare al futuro », in Assennato M, Linee di fuga. Architettura, teoria, politica, (ed.) Due Punti, Palermo. Very F, 2012, « Forcément théorique, l’architecture », in Trajectoires doctorales, Les Cahiers de la recherche architecturale et urbaine, 26/27, éditions du Patrimoine Centre des Monuments nationaux. Students credits : fig. 1, Caroof C Soumpholphakdy S ; fig. 2, Mama Awal H, Tiemtore S ; fig. 3, Gaudet P , Lathoud A, ; fig. 4, Kuznetsov D, LizukaI S, Skaladanyuk D, Yarvskaya A ; fig. 5 , Elhanaoui F, Hautier R, Le Bris G