Fondation Thalie and the École nationale Supérieure des Arts Décoratifs de Paris join forces for the 3rd season of the series of conversations Creators facing climate emergency, and invite architect and urbanist Patrick Bouchain and Frédérique Aït-Touati, Academic Director of the Experimental Political Arts Programme at Sciences-Po Paris, to address the theme of a sustainable urbanism.
Launched in 2020 by the Fondation Thalie’s founder Nathalie Guiot, this cycle – which has been developing in dialogue with the École Nationale Supérieure des Arts Décoratifs de Paris since its third season – aims to shed light in the present, and to mobilise for the future, the capacity of creators to imagine possible futures in dialogue with researchers with the aim of encouraging new collaborations between disciplines within which new visions of the world are produced. To bring out new imaginaries of transition, new ways of imagining and preserving the planet.
The full series of conversations is now available as an audio podcast!
Wednesday 19 April, 6:00 pm – 7:00 pm (École des Arts Décoratifs)
Guests : Patrick Bouchain, architect and urbanist and Frédérique Aït-Touati, scientific director of the Experimental Political Arts Program of the School of Public Affairs at Sciences Po (Paris).
Co-moderated by Chiara Vecchiarelli, curator of the programme for the Fondation Thalie and Pauline Marchetti architect, scenographer and professor at the École Nationale Supérieure des Arts Décoratifs.
How can we transform the function of urban or architectural projects into supports for collective action in the service of the expectations and needs of a territory? How do theater and fiction constitute essential elements in the construction of knowledge?
Patrick Bouchain and Frédérique Aït-Touati share an experiential and sustainable vision of urbanism, particularly through a collective perspective. Faced with the injunctions on the future of our cities and their necessary adaptability to climate issues, they will discuss a possible transformation of architecture, shedding light on the intelligence and know-how of researchers, philosophers, entrepreneurs, and citizens, who constitute fundamental aspects to think this new world and living in it differently.
Guests speakers
Patrick Bouchain is an architect, scenographer and winner of the Grand Prix de l’urbanisme 2019, particularly known for the rehabilitation of several industrial wastelands such as the Belle-de-Mai in Marseille or Le Lieu Unique in Nantes. Through his agency “Construire”, he defends a “democratic urbanism” and proposes a “High Human Quality” architecture. His projects are based on a fundamental and systemic analysis of contexts and needs, while favoring an economy of means and placing the user at the heart of the design process.
Frédérique Aït-Touati is a historian of science, a lecturer in French literature at Oxford University and an associate professor at Sciences-Po Paris. She is also the director and artistic director of Zone Critique, a theater company that explores our scientific and ecological imaginations, founded by the sociologist and anthropologist Bruno Latour, among others. At the crossroads of theater and philosophy, Zone Critique’s projects question the aesthetic and political consequences of a redefinition of life proposed by the earth sciences. During this 2022-2023 season, the company plans to create the show Earthscape, produced in collaboration with the philosopher Emanuele Coccia.
Practical information
Duration: 1h followed by a drink with the guest speakers.
Free access upon registration here.
École des Arts Décoratifs, 31 rue d’Ulm 75005 Paris
Based on a curatorial proposal by Fondation Thalie, this third season hosted at the École des Arts Décoratifs is organised by Chiara Vecchiarelli, coordinator of the programme Creators facing the climate emergency, in co-construction with Francesca Cozzolino, teacher in human and social sciences, and Patrick Laffont-DeLojo, teacher in stage design at the École des Arts Décoratifs.
In partnership with the École des Arts Décoratifs de Paris
