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Note on Format
In an attempt to marry the three core aspects of the Master in Urban Design of the department of Architecture in Cambridge (through which this research and project have been developed) and to make the most of the virtual environment in which this course is assessed and navigated, this portfolio is presented as a virtual object that merges thesis, implementation and design work in one interactive and immersive experience.
Therefore, this is simultaneously:
(1) a speculative design project about a housing estate in suburban Paris;
(2) a piece of philosophical and sociological research about the validity and potential of emotions — more specifically the atmosphere of love — as relevant tools for spatial practices;
(3) a virtual object existing in the world that will be used to make the case for the implementation of alternative futures in (or out) of suburban Paris and the potential of emotions to steer them.
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Les Agnettes — Gennevilliers
Les Agnettes in the North West of Paris is a place right now in the middle of major transformations brought about by the arrival of a new train station of the Grand Paris Express on its Western Corner. Like dozens of other similar developments around Paris who will now be interconnected by the train network, it is now facing densification pressures. Les Agnettes and the dreams of the 50s are asking how should the story continue?
How should the
story of Les Agnettes be completed?
VIDEOS:
Le bidonville de Gennevilliers,ORTF (1961)
Naissance d'une cité, Gennevilliers, Louis Daquin, (1964)
Doisneau, la banlieue en couleur (2017)
R Urban / Networks of civic resilience, Atelier d'Architecture Autogérée (2021)
The Architecture of Good Intentions, Colin Rowe (1994)
Why Les Agnettes?
The cité (housing estate) of Les Agnettes in the North West of Paris is in the middle of major transformations brought about by the arrival of a new train station on its Western Corner. The neighbourhood is an emblem of what Colin Rowe was calling The Architecture of Good Intentions: places born under the illusory impression that a rational urban plan dreamt by one person (or a few) can produce a collective and socially sustainable vision for city making. Product of post-war optimism and the efforts of its then communist mayor (Waldeck L'Huillier), the dream of Les Agnettes came to supplant the pre-existing slums in order to provide housing for the Newcomers. Later in the 1990s and 2000s, the area — like many others of the kind — came to be infamously known for its criminality and poor living conditions.
Today, being threatened again of the same scenario by the densification intentions of the Grand Paris, the residents of Les Agnettes have been looking for alternative ways for the story to unfold. This project is the projection and the visualisation of one of these alternative futures.
Map of the
Grand Paris Express highlighting the developments under threats of densification.
The neighborhood, of 6,827 inhabitants, with a culturally diverse population and a notably low-income average (20K€/household)(Apur,2014), is at the centre of the heavy gentrification processes going on on the outskirts of Paris in relation to the coming of the Grand Paris Express: a new network of rapid transit lines. This new inter-communes system will connect Les Agnettes, with the construction of a new station on its Western corner, to the surrounding suburbs. Most importantly, it will give access, in minutes, to La Défense, the most important economic area of Paris. The densification efforts come after the neighbourhood has been selected as a high priority area by the NPRNU (the national program for urban renewal) financed by the ANRU (the national agency for urban renewal), managing nation-wide a budget of 42 billion Euros affecting a total of 4 million inhabitants.
I will be using the rue Jean Prévost and the place des Agnettes as a Synecdoche for how the whole of Les Agnettes could potentially evolve.
Mobilisation pour garder les tours des Agnettes, Le Parisien (2016)
Where are we at now?
A masterplan has been drawn for the area and is already under construction. One corner of it is still untouched and will be used as a synecdoche for projecting how the whole of Les Agnettes could unfold alternatively. The projection and its implications will be serving as case study example for other similar neighbourhoods that are right now earlier in the process and dealing with similar tensions.
By destroying or partially demolishing certain existing buildings and adding new blocks in between it, the mayor and planners are aiming at "changing the image of the neighbourhood" by densifiying it and making it more attractive to newcomers and businesses. The efforts have unsurprisingly raised opposition from local inhabitants who have looked for different ways for the story to unfold.
The area is right now under the densification plans carried by masterplaners SEMAG 92, architects MGAU and PRAXYS for landscaping. They have developped over the course of a decade a plan for the densification of the area. After years of consultation and protest coming from the local population, they have now downscaled the project and started to destroy and kick-started the reconstruction for a section of the site. The arrival of new money and residents that will diversify the economic demographic of the area have brought with itself its load of development that fits this new potential offer.
Proposed developments for the future of Les Agnettes by Agnece RVA.
1964
From:“NAISSANCE D’UNE CITÉ, GENNEVILLIERS” by Louis Daquin, 1964
"Every year, Genevilliers loses its gray suburban feel. A new city is advancing with its bright, harmonious, functional and airy neighborhoods. The past and its anarchic constructions recedes, sometimes leaving behind a small sad pavilion or a tiny garden. The past stains, the new imposes itself. Cité des Agnettes, the first part of a self-imposed program by the municipality under the leadership of its communist mayor. Mayor: “Rational town planning and the construction of comfortable housing for workers were imperative for a town like Gennevilliers. It was therefore necessary to meet the needs of modern life.” The outlook is realistic: 30 years are here now which guarantees the future. This city was a distant land, a land of royal hunting. A country of chatelains and sailors: a shattered country. There is now a marked road which should lead to happiness."
2018
From: "PRÉSENTATION DU PROJET DE RÉNOVATION URBAN DES AGNETTES“ by Patrice Leclerc, 2018"
"We want to densify in order to “faire de la ville”, allow new populations to come and live in this district and thus create the economic conditions necessary for the life of local shops. We also want to diversify in order to offer a wider residential offer within the neighborhood and rebalance socially by building mainly home ownership. This will be an important factor in changing the image of the neighborhood, of the schools, to bring it closer to other areas of the city.
Karl Marx, The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte
What's the issue?
Even if the intentions of the local authorities appears (again) to be good, the projected developments are proposing what appears to be a repetition of history (the first time as tragedy, the second as farce). Antisocial and isolating blocks —with no relation to the context they are placed in — are threatening to swiftly gentrify the area by pricing out the current residents or physically expropriate them. While the existing buildings and urban realm definitely has the potential to be improved, another more inclusive, more delightful and more locally directed alternative path can be projected. The situation that Les Agnettes is facing is widespread across all developments touched by the Grand Paris Express and the tensions they are trying to negotiate are shared by many.
Unsurprisingly, resident have been unsatisfied about the changes brought about the mayor, master-planners and architects. The demolition of certain “barres” or tower — and the displacement it brings with it — have shocked locals who are seeing their family, friends and acquaintances leave the area. The walling off or expropriation of still present pre-war housing, the creation of new unaffordable blocks and the destruction of green and playground areas are all reasons that are contributing to the unsatisfaction of local residents. Reduced to silence, the unsatisfied inhabitants of the area did not find support or energy to provide alternative options for the restructuring of their area.
In 1921, Le Corbusier was projecting rationality in the city of love.
In 2021, what would love look and feel
like in the city of rationality?
What are the aims of the project?
Imagine an alternative future for the urban development of Les Agnettes.
Visualise potential conditions and systematic changes that would address the current isolation experienced by the residents.
Put forward a direction and a process that could be considered by other neighbourhoods that are dealing with similar tensions.
Make the case for the use of emotions (more specifically the contemporary simulated urban atmosphere related to the emotion of love) as a direction for urban transformations.
"Cubes, squares, rectangles. Everything straight, everything even. Clutter has been outlawed. But a little disorder is a good thing. That’s where poetry lurks. We never needed promoters to provide us, in their generosity, with ‘leisure spaces.’ We invented our own. Before the war, there were nooks and crannies everywhere. Today people are trying to eliminate shadows, straighten streets. You can’t even put up a shed without the personal authorization of the minister of culture. Spontaneity has been outlawed. People are afraid of life."
— Robert Doisneau
Old Paris is no more
(the form of a city changes more quickly, alas!
than the human heart)
— Baudelaire, The Swan (1861)
Les Agnettes is here
(the form of a city can change
at the pace of the human heart)
— Louis Lupien, Interplay (2021)
EXISTING CONDITIONS
Agrocité
Existing community garden by Atelier d’Architecture Autogérée. Feidlwork base for summer 2020
Place des Agnettes
Grocery and Café (The only ones of the whole km2 of the development
Housing "Barres"
Homes / Barre 128
Est. Pop / Barre : 355
Playground
Gathering social space for families and children
Future Parking Spaces
Current empty field to be converted in parking space
Greenery used as parking
Patches of "greenery" used as parking spaces.
Driving School
Pharmacy
"To restore a building is not to preserve it, to repair, or rebuild it; it is to reinstate it in a condition of completeness which could never have existed at any given time." — Viollet-le-Duc
Who has done it before?
In 1902, Louis Bonnier, a critic of the straightness and monotony of Haussmanian streets was projecting an alternative future for Paris. An altered version of the roads that the Baron (Haussmann) had projected that was letting the creativity of craftmans/architects and the intentions of the inhabitants shine through. He was using the generous and solid canvas of Haussmanian architecture to bring the buildings to "a state of completeness that had never existed". The situation that architects and urban planners now have to deal with in the wake of the transformations of the Grand Paris share similarities to how they had to answer to Haussmann at the beginning of the 20th Century. Straightness, generosity and solidity as the dormant support for the flourishing of the personality, situation and culture of the local inhabitants of the banlieues.
All Drawings : Louis Bonnier, "Les Règlements de Voirie", Paris : Ch. Schmid, 1903, p.23, fig.4)
Existing Conditions (Before 1902)
Potential Conditions (After 1902)
Existing Conditions (Before 1902)
Potential Conditions (After 1902)
The story that Louis Bonnier projected granted new freedoms to builder and architects, which lead to the explosion of the Art Nouveau movement and the invention of whole new typologies for the streets of Paris.
Louis Bonnier
(1)
Completing the story by projecting an alternative future for it.
(2)
Point out the necessary changes for the story to unfold in that direction.
How the story unfolded:
The explosion of the Art Nouveau Movement
The invention of whole new typologies
(e.g.: batiment à gradins of Henri Sauvage or the buildings of the rue Mallet Stevens)
Louis Lupien
(1)
Completing the story by projecting an alternative future for it.
(2)
Point out the necessary changes for the story to unfold in that direction.
How should the story unfold?
Using the emotional spectrum as a compass, more specifically the atmosphere of love as a direction.
Has anyone already attempted to complete
the story of the grands ensembles?
Many have. Lucien and Simone Kroll, one of the most notable example, have dedicated their whole career at completing the spatial narratives of the grand ensembles (large-scale high-rise housing projects) by projecting what they were naming complexity and by redefining the role of inhabitants and architects in the production of space.
Their work was conceiving architecture less as a solution or an answer, but more as a continuity of continuous differentiation. Where the story unfolds step by step, incrementally for the city to gradually evolve and progressively represent the lives, intentions and personalities of the inhabitants of the area. By accepting the existing structures as they are, by redefining the role of the architect as an active agent embedded in the local government as a translator of intentions, Lucien and Simon Kroll have been able to set in motion a movement in many functionalist developments where the character of locals have been able to come forth and become progressively inscribed in the built form of their surroundings.
Simone et Lucien Kroll, Une Architecture Habitée, (2013)
"We do not despise the old structures.
We dress them up little by little."
— Atelier Lucien Kroll, Enfin chez soi (1996)
Simone et Lucien Kroll, Une Architecture Habitée, (2013)
Do these processes inscribe themselves
into more contemporary trends?
Many current architects and urban thinkers are borrowing from science fiction the practice of worldbuilding to make visible a specific future either within a defined space or in a whole fictional universe. Thinkers like Liam Young for example, calling himself a "speculative architect", is projecting worlds that are helping to illuminate certain areas of the future in order to help us make more strategic decisions within the present.
Planet City by Liam Young projects a world as if it would be rebuilt with an entirely different set of values and assumptions and ideals. Imagining a city that hosts the whole planet.
"Architecture as the prototyping of possible futures."
— Liam Young
"The future is a vast dark and shadowed landscape. The more torches we have shining, the more we can see and map that potential landscape and the more we can make strategic choices about the path that we want to follow. To scaffold alternative ways of being."
How is this project different from the ones of
these other people who have done it before?
While (C3) Liam Young is projecting worlds in relation to the relationships we have with technology or (C2) Lucien and Simone Kroll are using what they name complexity to complete the Grands Ensembles or (C1) Louis Bonnier is making projections in the name of freedom of expression, I am advancing that we can use the emotional spectrum — and their spatial manifestations (atmospheres) — as a compass instead of aimlessly projecting potential spaces. We can use Louis Bonnier's concrete pragmatic approach, the engaged participatory process of Lucien and Simone Kroll and the projective practice of speculative architects like Liam Young and add an emotional dimension and direction to them.
In what direction
should the future of
Les Agnettes unfold?
In which direction should we point the torch?
This is the purpose of this project and the thesis behind it. Since projections are technically infinite, I advance that we can use emotions, more specifically their spatial manifestations — atmospheres — as a compass to visualise worlds. And I am arguing that in one treasured corner of that spectrum, there is a story we have been telling each for a while now, a story with a very rich imagery, that permeates every aspect of our lives, a narrative with a strong cultural significance that blossomed in parallel with modernity. A story that could help us make better streets.
How can the emotional spectrum be used as a compass to project spatial futures?
In everyday life, we use our emotions — how we feel in the present — to direct our decisions towards positive, pleasant and engaging situations and away from the negative, unpleasant and disengaging ones. They are condensed constructions of the past, the present and the future that materialise themselves in an embodied experience. The same way, atmospheres (spatialised emotions) can serve us culturally to make more strategic choices in the present and orient the direction of futures.
For more on the construction of emotion: How emotions are made? By Lisa Fieldman Barret, Pan (2017)
What are emotions like in space?
How do we feel, produce and project
emotional experiences (like love) spatially?
At the cultural level, geographers are using the term atmosphere to name our capacity to simulate emotions in space. Out of words like cosy, eerie or bleak, we can simulate, in our minds, detailed affective worlds that we can experience in their full sensuality (think of the last great novel you have read and feel again that space you created out of ink on a page). It is this capacity — at the individual and cultural level — to simulate spatialised emotions that, I sustain, is of special interest for spatial practices.
Robert Solomon — Love: Emotion, Myth and Metaphor
Why do simulated atmospheres
can be useful for spatial practices?
Since they also exist culturally, the set of imageries that they contain carries with them the meaning of the emotion they are associated to. Atmospheres can therefore be considered, like myths, as cultural tools. By containing their own rituals and imagery — influenced by a mix of personal experiences and cultural exposure — they tell us stories that contain clues as to how to imagine and project “a way to live in the world that we construct for ourselves". They are a way to adapt our experience of reality in order to reframe the way that we engage with it.
Not to escape reality, but
to give us a chance to inhabit it fully.
Why and how do certain atmospheres
become more relevant than others?
Within the spectrum of possible atmospheres, certain regions become clearer, more defined and richer and they acquire names and cultural significance. They become concepts that designers and societies can use culturally to understand and steer the present.
Within different cultures, recurring motifs emerge for certain atmospheres which serve to inform designers as to how to alter space to suggest different emotional experiences. Not static in time or space, these patterns are in constant mutation. Like languages, they reflect the cultural threads and realities of the cultures they belong to and are in constant tension between the normative and nonnormative forces of societies.These motifs assemble and form evolving culturally specific sets — imageries — and allow the production of atmospheres. The Danish atmosphere of Hygge for example, its hyggeligt imagery associated to motifs related to warmth and comfort translated in elements such as blankets, fire, hot drinks and warm lights (hyggelys), and its role at the societal level to bond communities, families, friends and lovers together. Similarly, the Japanese concept of Wabi-Sabi could be used to demonstrate an analogous relationship between an emotional experience of the world, the aesthetics of its atmosphere and its cultural significance.
Which atmosphere should we consider ?
What is being proposed here is that the contemporary simulated urban atmosphere related to the emotion of love carries, in the West, a distinct and evolving cultural significance, one that could serve as a direction for architects and urban designers to construct better urban spaces. The reason for this comes from the very nature of love, why it exists and what does it seek.
what do you see and how do you feel
when you visualise a street that appears
to you and only you as a place where
you could imagine yourself falling in love?
The ground of love : a term coined by Simon May in his Love: A New Understanding of an Ancient Emotion (2019)
What might we be talking
about when we talk about love?
Love is a mess. Defined subjectively at every moment, changing from individual to individual and from culture to culture, it glows through its ambiguity and its strength. Since the concept can be directed at a wide range of objects, such as gods, children, animals, parents, romantic partners, art, countries, political ideals, friends or landscapes and since we make use of the verb ‘to love’ to describe concepts as different to each other as sexual desire, faith or altruism, it is only by trying to understand what love might be seeking (the ground of love) that we might be able to form an understanding that the story that its spatiality is telling us.
Ontological rootedness : a term coined by Simon May in his Love: A New Understanding of an Ancient Emotion (2019)
Out of the available literature, two recurring themes stand out in descriptions of the nature of love, two concepts that bear a specific relevance for the field of spatial practices. First, love has been defined on one side as a (1) glimpse at a promise of home (or ontological rootedness) in the face of alienating conditions but also as a (2) recognition, acceptance and experience of the essential alterity of that world in which it wish to be grounded. These two, I argue, are the driving forces that construct the urban atmosphere of love. Like a push and pull that balances itself in a forceful embrace, they generate in their meeting a burning equilibrium. A world of possibilities and differences that materialises itself in delight. (Please consult the written thesis for deeper investigation.)
Repository of useful perspectives on love from philosophy, sociology, psychology and litterature that might help to understand its meaning, structure and aims and its relevance for spatial practices.
Why love and not another word or emotion?
(While the points below are a good summary, please consult the pilot thesis for full expanded justification)
Love is a tension that has been saturating all other forms of art and posseses a very rich imagery and cultural significance.
Love is an emerging concept in all social sciences and is virtually absent in urban/architectural discourses.
Love is representing our resisting nature in the face of the oppressive forces and structures of modernity.
The history of love runs in parallel with the history of modernity, the history of fiction, the history of women’s emancipation, and the history of resistance itself.
Compared to other emotion concepts, love has a deep personal connotation and a rich cultural apparatus.
Love allows to bypass rational, practical and technical imperatives and it destabilises assumptions by invoking a different frame of references.
Love gracefully encompasses many other concepts within itself.
More on the quasi objectivity of atmospheres:
Böhme, The Aesthetics of Atmospheres, 2017 or Griffero, Quasi-Things, 2017.
Can't I just imagine myself
falling in love anywhere?
While you might be able to imagine yourself falling in love in any space, not any space comes to mind when you imagine a place where you can fall in love. And as anyone could admit, almost anywhere can evoke love forasmuch as you are with the right person and in the right mood, and anywhere can turn out to represent anything but love when you are with the wrong person or in the wrong mood, but love itself cannot evoke anywhere or any place. A specific imagery, influenced by a mix of personal experiences and cultural exposure, generates the image that prompts in your individual mind when imagining a space of love. It is this quasi-objective human capacity that designers use to simulate emotions in space: to imagine atmospheres that carry a distinct emotional content.
More on the quasi objectivity of atmospheres:
Böhme, The Aesthetics of Atmospheres, 2017 or Griffero, Quasi-Things, 2017.
My projection of a street of love might be completely different from someone else's.
How is it any relevant if it is so subjective?
Like architects considering an architectural typology it is possible to use love's atmosphere by adapting it and using it as a valuable cultural tool. Once reclaimed from the hands of oppressive forces (like heteronormativity, capitalism or patriarchy for example) — it is possible to interpret personally these images and acknowledge them role as part of the metaphors we live by.
While two simulations of the atmosphere of love will never be the same, it is in the overlaps that the atmosphere of love can be partially grasped, as "quasi-objective" phenomena. The more diverse and the more local we can gather visions about an atmosphere of love, the richer the projected future will be.
How diverse and inclusive can an
atmosphere of love be?
It can technically be as diverse and inclusive as we want it to be. In order to help to diversify it as much as possible in the context of this project, I have interviewed people from the area by attempting to reach a sample that could be as varied as possible.
The interviewees were contrasting in age, self-perceived cultural identification, sexual orientation, gender identity and self-perceived economic status. Each of these participants was asked the same thing: to visualise and describe a street that appears to them and only them as a place where they could imagine themselves falling in love. While efforts were put to gather a group as diverse as possible, the participants assembled are far from being representative of the infinite plurality of human realities. They should instead be considered as an informative sample that draws a few portraits of a few representations of a few spatial dimensions of love. (Please consult the written thesis for full methodology)
"When we concentrate on an inner picture and when we are careful not to interrupt the natural flow of events, our unconscious will produce a series of images which make a complete story.".
— Carl Jung
In order to broaden and diversify my own perspective on how the atmosphere of love looks like in space, I conducted dozens of interviews with people from the area and sketched their vision. The participants were all asked the same task: to describe, in the most detailed possible way, the image that prompts into their mind when trying to visualise a street that appears to them and only them as a place where they could imagine themselves falling in love. (Please refer to the written thesis for interviews edited in relation to the motifs)
How else is it possible to understand the atmosphere of love other than through interviews?
In the context of this project, I have broadened my perspective on the atmosphere (1) by visiting and analysing hundreds of case study streets in and around Paris that are culturally characterised as corresponding to an atmosphere of love, (2) by looking at the history of the atmosphere to understand how it is rooted in religious transformations, changes in the status of women and how it acts as a repository of symbols of political resistance, and (3) by watching and analysing hundreds of movies that use the atmosphere of love to tell their story.
(1) Case Study Streets
Looking at hundreds of street around Paris to understand common denominators. Below displayed a comparative study between two adjacent streets — rue Austerlizst (left) and rue Crémieux (right). While the two streets have comparable dimensions, one is described as one of the most romantic street in Paris (so popular that residents created their own catalogue of ridicule of Instagramers) and the other could be described as evoking an atmosphere of fear.
(2) History of the Atmosphere
The history of love in the West has been running in parallel and has occupied a pivotal and dialectical position with a series of major social changes that shaped and defined the way we live our lives today; transformations that have not only organised our intimate lives, but have also configured our cities and streets and how we respond to them. By looking at the spatial marks left by three significant shifts in the history of the emotion — spiritual, social and political — we can trace how the contemporary Western conception of an urban atmosphere of love has come into being. (Consult the written thesis for complete descriptions)
RELIGIOUS TRANSFORMATIONS
No more divine, love’s new earthly object furnished its imaginary with the mystery, capacity and presence of its own perspective; the irregularity, plurality and roughness of individualities; and, in the wake of a disenchanted world, the warmth, chance and magic of nature.
CHANGES IN THE
STATUS OF WOMEN
Through acts of refusal, liberation and vindication, feminists and protofeminists have been defending, amongst many other claims, the right for women (and all) to be present, active, and safe in the public realm.The urban atmosphere of love, we advance, has been partly constructed in that way: as a mental counterspace in the face of patriarchal oppression in the public realm.
REPOSITORY OF SYMBOLS OF RESISTANCE
Recognised as one of the great subversive acts of Western culture, love has unsurprisingly been infusing its spatial dimension with many icons of resistance of the past centuries. From cobblestones to narrow streets passing by the terrasse of café, many of the symbols of the street of love are uncoincidentally also emblems of resistance of the Western world.
(3) Film Analysis
Film is an effective support to understand the relationship between the emotion and space. By watching an analysing hundreds of movies, we can start to understand the spatial dynamics of love as they are portrayed and used in culture. I've conducted a more in depth research of the movies of the French director Eric Rohmer who dedicated over decades his whole filmography to love relations while placing an acute emphasis on how space plays in role in their development. (Consult the essay on Eric Rohmer and the video accompanying it for deeper look of the relationship between film and the atmosphere of love)
How is the atmosphere of love in space?
Through research, I've arrived at a set of eleven motifs that kept coming back over and over. They are right now 'a best guess' at trying to understand some of the spatial dynamics that are contained in the atmosphere of love. They are the foundation of this design project and the driving direction behind it. (Please consult the written thesis for full descriptions)
Examples with detailed spatial representation:
GRADIENCE
An urban atmosphere of love celebrates the multitude of options and in-betweens that can exist between the full exposure of public life and the complete seclusion of privateness. It fragments the gradient by loosening the tension that exists between both realms and blurs the boundaries by populating them with a diversity of moments.
LIMINALITY
The world of love is a world at the limits of control, a place of in-betweens that celebrates the transient and the transitional. Where the normal is lifted and the oppressive is transgressed to make room for the difference of a novel world to be. A place that embodies the seditious character of love and its capacity to construct a space of resistance in the face of the dehumanising and alienating conditions of reality.
PETITS RÉCITS
An urban atmosphere of love celebrates and confronts you with the multiplicity, diversity and granularity of human realities. It communicates the evidence that outside of “You” exist other “I”s that are perceived as unique to themselves as you are unique to yourself. It decentres your sense of self, loosens your impression of omnipotence and presents a world where the uncertainty, the ambiguity and the unpredictability of the world appear to you as a delightful collage.
What kind of spaces do the motifs of the atmosphere of love create?
When we translate the motifs of the atmosphere of love into a place like Les Agnettes, we start to understand the type of architecture it generates. Not only do we start to see how it would look and feel like, but we also start to understand the type of changes that would need to occur for that story to unfold in a place like Les Agnettes.
What changes would need to occur for the story of the atmosphere of love to unfold in a place like Les Agnettes?
We see that alterations to the roofs, land and facades of the area would need to be conducted. We also see that these modifications would need to involve the direct participation of local inhabitants, that these changes would need to happen step by step — over time — and that these would need to be steered slightly in the direction of the atmosphere. In short, we would need to see happen the:
Involvement and direct participation of the residents of Les Agnettes.
Rediscovery of the role of the architect as an active agent embedded in the local governement.
Guidance and direction of future developments based upon the motifs of the atmosphere of love.
How would the local inhabitants be involved
in the future developments?
One of the ways that this would be manifested is through Unitary Alterations : individually generated changes coming from local inhabitants and steered by city architects. I am imagining a different Les Agnettes, where residents of the area could be applying for alterations to the roof, facades or land of their surroundings. These could take shape as simple awning installations, the setting up of a communal garden on a roof of an existing building or through the fragmentation of the land for the construction of new buildings.
ROOF ALTERATIONS
Local inhabitants can apply to proposes changes to the way the roof of their building is being used. These could take shape as:
e.g.:
Residential
Commercial (retail / food&drink / services)
Social (association / help space)
Environmental (park / gardening / deck)
Production (maker space / workshop / office)
LAND ALTERATIONS
Local inhabitants can apply to proposes changes to the way the land is being used.
e.g.:
Residential building
Commercial (retail / food&drink / services)
Social (association / help space)
Environmental (park / gardening)
Production (maker space / workshop / office)
FACADE ALTERATIONS
Local inhabitants can apply to proposes changes to the facade of their dwelling or ground floor of their building. These could take shape as:
e.g.:
Hung / supported / recessed balcony
Resurfacing
Enclosed balcony
Shutters
Awnings
Planters
Groundfloor transformation
How would the role of architects change in a version of Les Agnettes as built upon the atmosphere of love?
In order to steer the projects in the direction of the motifs, the role of the architect would have to rediscovered as an active agent embedded in the local government and present at every stage of the development of Unitary Alterations.
Projects would be preliminary developed with the help of city architects similarly to how it is done in advocacy planning.
The projects would then be presented to Mayor's office and selected by city architects based on the level at which they increase the manifestation of the motifs. A process similar to how Frei Otto curated the selection for his Okohaus.
The projects would then get fully developed with the help of city architects. In the similar way to how Simone and Lucien Kroll did it for their whole carreer.
The project would then be built individually with independent contractors with or without the help of inhabitants and architects. In a manner similar to how MVRDV organised the development of Nieuw Leyden.
How would such changes be implemented in a community like Les Agnettes?
Obviously, none of these processes are new but to weave them together and to give them a direction based upon an emotional intention brings a fresh take on participatory design. These — as well as guidance and direction for the future developments — would be inscribed in a new manual for Les Agnettes that would run along and complement the local plan. (Please consult the implementation essay written in the form of a film script to understand better the details of how it would unfold.)
Les Agnettes would become the kind of place where it would be allowed and encouraged to install an awning at a window, for a garden association to expand or move on the roof of a building or for someone could open a hair salon on the ground floor of their building.
"Our gardening assocation is now on the roof of my building."
"Someone is installing an awning at their window."
"A person from the building has opened a hair salon on the ground floor of our building."
How would such changes look and feel like in a place like Les Agnettes?
By taking a small section of the area as a synecdoche, we can visualise and understand more in-depth how the alterations to the roofs, facades and land could be developing according to the atmosphere of love. We'll be taking a closer look at the rue Jean Provost and the Place des Agnettes (displayed above) — one of the only section still untouched by the masterplan currently in place in Les Agnettes.
I'll be using this diagram to contextualise the drawings in the selected study area.
How are the buildings in the area? How well do they suit themselves for customisation?
The blocks themselves are typical of the era with precast concrete panels and a diversity of double aspects flat layouts. The strength of the concrete frame, the absence of supporting walls and the facade being unitarily built are all lending themselves gracefully for customisation. Core circulation and vertical distribution allows for future connection to the grid from new additions to the roofs.
"Love is not a desire for beauty;
it is a yearning for completion."
— Octavio Paz
Potential Completion — Overview
Parc Creation
The empty vacant space on the East of the 1-15 Jean Prévost might want to be transformed in parc with the planting of new trees, plants, bushes, flowers, water features, pavilion and benches.
Facade Unitary Alterations
Local residents can apply for unitary alterations to the facade of the appartement. In the form of projections, recess or surface changes, the changes brough to the facade are taken case by case from the demands of the residents.
Land Unitary Alterations
Local inhabitants can apply for the development of a fragmented piece of land. Small fragments of the unbuilt land is to be progressively donated to community land trusts formed by local residents.
Smaller, greener, fuller streets
City architects would be responsible for the orchestration and of the in-between spaces left after the unitary alterations. They would complete them by increasing the manifestation of the motifs of the atmosphere of love.
Roof Unitary Alterations
Local inhabitants — who want to — have the capacity to apply for construction on the roof of the building.
Conservation of the Agrocité
The existing Agrocité, a community garden managed by Atelier d’Architecture Autogérée , is to be kept maintained and expanded by local residents being currently one of the only public meeting point.
How could the roofs be altered?
The roofs of Les Agnettes could become the expression of local intentions where new streets in the sky would be completing the modernist dream of active rooftops. Residents (who wish to) could (1) apply for an extension of their existing dwelling if their home is on the top floor or (2) would be allowed to apply to move into a newly design flat on the roof of their building or (3) submit a non-residential proposal to occupy a part of the roof — park/garden/services/commercial/etc.
Individually designed CLT shells (with the help of city architects and future residents) would be lifted with cranes and placed on the solid roof of the buildings of Les Agnettes. The ease of adaptability of CLT constructions would allow (if desired) future residents to adapt their dwelling — reclad, paint, attach planters, seating etc. The units could potentially host a variety of uses (residential, commercial, service, small workshops).
City architects would be orchestrating the progressive configuration of the designed units to ensure building regulations rules but also to maximise the manifestation of the motifs. For example by adding gradience, fostering intersectability, ensuring atectonic forms or vegetation support.
The new constructions would be extending the structural grid of the existing frame, the load-bearing CLT forms will be completing the strong and flexible foundation provided by the existing buildings.
The newly created streets would bring to life the dormant rooftops of Les Agnettes and give a chance to the buildings to reach a state of completeness that may have never existed.
"Love names our joyful response to a promise we glimpse to meet this need for rootedness or groundedness or home in a world that we supremely value." — Simon May
How could the land be altered?
The space between the existing buildings of Les Agnettes could also be completed. Creating new moments and new opportunities for the people of the neighbourhood. The land would be progressively redistributed to small cooperatives of 3 to 7 units of single or multiple occupants each. The units would be vertically designed with the help of city architects but also horizontally to solves clashes. City architects would be present at every stage of the development to maximise the manifestation of the motifs and be also responsible for the layout of the leftover spaces in between units in the same manner.
(1) Organisation
Mixed or single use
Units could be of single use (e.g.: residential) or of mixed use (e.g.: residential on top floors and a retail unit on ground floor. However, mixed use proposals would be prefered.
Progressive Ownership
A system progressive ownership would also be put in place where future residents become slowly owner of their unit by paying never more than 30% of their salary.
Single of Multiple occupants
The units could host single or multiple occupants depending on the groups formed by the inhabitants
Cooperatives
Small cooperatives of 3 to 7 units would be created by local inhabitants. The buildings would be individually designed vertically in conversation with architects but also horizontally, between units, to solve clashes.
(2) Design Prescriptions
A set of guidelines would be operating to increase the manifestation of the motifs. Prescriptions on width, heights but also on massing and design. Along with the presence and direction carried by the city architects, the prescriptions would be steering the proposals in the direction of the motifs.
Minimum offset
A minimum offset of one meter from the neighbouring unit would need to be observed to contribute to the atectonic character of the streets
One inhabitable exterior element per street facade
The design of units would need to include at least one inhabitable elements per street-facing facade (of at least one meter in depth). Protuding elements can extend over land delimitation by 1m. They could take the form of projected or recessed balconies, or external staircases and would be contributing to the augmentation of the gradience, atectonics, connectivity and intersectability of the streets.
Min/Max street width
Newly created streets would have to be of maximum eight meters and minimum 5.5 meters to accommodate the passage of vehicles. Tighter streets would contribute to the intersectability, connectivity and environmental comfort provided by wind and sun shelter and outdoor rooms created by nooks and crannies.
Min passage width
The space between cooperative should be of minimum 2.5 meters and maximum 6 meters. Tighters passages would create liminal moments between the exteriors streets and internal ones.
Transparent or usable ground floor
Ground floor must be transparent and/or provide publically accessible seating and/or sunshading. Such measure would contribute at the level of gradience of the street and intersectability
Significant vegetation support
Every level of every facade must provide significant vegetation support in the form of planters, trellis, etc. A condition that would contribute to the weaving of nature within the neighbourhood.
Maximum unit height
Units are to be maximum 12m high to ensure connectivity of the area
Minimum unit height
Units are to be maximum 8m wider on street-facing facades to ensure the representation of the diversity of the area the visible petits récits of the neighbourhood.
Minimum sidewalk
A minimum of 2 meter and maximum 4 meters must allowed for sidewalk to contribute to the intersectability of the area.
The prescription would potentially lead to a plurality of proposal that would create a tapestry representative of the people who lives there. Kind of like a city.
"Love is about adding to the world — each addition being the living trace of the loving self; in love, the self is, bit by bit, transplanted into the world."
— Zygmunt Bauman
How could the facades be altered?
Les Agnettes could become a place where the facades of its buildings could become mirrors of the personality, situation and desires of the people living behind them. It could be taking full advantage of the modular curtain wall of its modernist heritage and add layers to the existing. New connection points, new moments that would progressively complete the dream of a flexible "free facade" so dearly defended by the functionalist thinkers of the Architecture of Good Intentions.
Using the modularity of the concrete panels of the existing buildings, the alterations to the facades would be conducted progressively step by step at the rate of the proposals of local inhabitants. Taking the shape of recessed or projected balconies, awning, staircases, winter gardens, facade changes or re-cladding, the changes applied to the facade would gradually be responding to the desires, needs and personality of the occupiers. The proposals would be preliminarily developed and selected by city architects according to the degree to which they increase the manifestation of the motifs and would have to be approved by other residents who are directly affected by the changes (issues related to shadow casting or overlooking for example).
Facades (and roof) alterations would be installed using lifts and suspended scaffolding to minimise disturbances. The use of CLT and its suitability for prefabrication would be encouraged for roof and facade alterations so that more construction activities could be conducted off-site.
With opened and closed recesses and projections, the facades would start to become more gradient, more connected and full of little narratives.
Les Agnettes would become the kind of place where inhabitants could make changes to their dwelling depending on the way they use it and/or their situation. For example, where an unused room due to a child leaving the home could become a recessed balcony. When changed, the newly installed facades would provide a contemporary level of insulation, fire safety and acoustic performances.
Structures that would slot themselves into the existing concrete frame and provide new connection points and possibilities for the residents. Where awnings and vegetation support would showcase their personality and culture to passers-by.
Les Agnettes would become the kind of place where inhabitants could extend their dwelling by projecting extensions to it. Taking the form of open or enclosed balconies, connecting passerelles or staircases, these new spaces could serve as additional eating, working or storage space for example or simply to enlarge existing rooms.
Extensions would be able to attach themselves to the existing structures by hanging themselves to the slabs above for extension over 2 meters span or by being supported by brackets for structures under 2 meters span.
Oversized lobbies at the ground floor level would become places of opportunities for residents who wish to open commercial, social or production-oriented projects. A hair salon, a small workshop, a launderette, a coffee shop, a phone or bike repair place, a communal living room, a small bookshop, a "help for homework" space, the dormant spaces of the ground floor of buildings could become activated by the ideas, intentions and projects of local residents.
The alterations to the facade and ground floors will inevitably be changing the experience of the street adjoining to it but will also without a doubt be transforming the experience of the interior spaces of the buildings. Recessed balconies will come from a desire of the resident to sacrifice part of their apartment while projections (closed or open) will be providing extensions to the plan, expanding the space available. Here are a few scenarios of possible fictional intentions inspired by conversations with people on site.
"Love makes space and time perceptible to the heart.
— Proust
The changes would be conceived and perceived as a series of events that would be progressively depolarising the intimacy by adding layers to what’s there. Layers that would not be coming out of nothing but would rather be coming out what is already there, what is dormant. Acknowledging the existing and adding to it.
Below: a typical 2 bedroom flat as it would be potentially altered.
View from a potential projected balcony extension.
Alterations that would be evolving like a steered build-up of intentions. Kind of like a city.
"Rather than shielding us from the world, love open us to it. Rather than causing us to forget the world and our past, love is how we incorporate them. [...] Love is both a recovery and a discovery". — Simon May
The Uncanny, Sigmund Freud (1919)
Why does the projected world have
a certain nostalgic feel to it?
It is the unique capacity of love to show us simultaneously, in one composite event, what is unknown and what is recognised. In what I have been calling inverted uncanny (in reference to Freud's concept of the uncanny) love presents the unfamiliar in a familiar form, as if you’ve known it forever even if you’ve never seen it before.
Like a wave about to break, the atmosphere of love dwells on that edge between the known familiarity of open sea and the distressing unfamiliarity of whitewater. Like a surfer, it constantly readjusts itself to represent a world that stays faithful to that sweet spot, playing and growing in that thin and sensitive zone between the ordinary and the unsettling, between the banal and the strange, between the known and the unknown, between the isolating anonymity and the awkward chance encounters. It composes an image that brings you at the verge of your own personal capacity to cope with the unpredictable and the unfamiliar, and presents it into its most delightful form. Love is the radiant glow that enlightens that edge before it tips.
Therefore, while narrow streets, low buildings, openable windows, balconies, awnings, shutters, plants or stones on the floor are not elements that belong fundamentally to the past, the atmosphere of love succeeds gracefully at presenting us a contemporary world that embeds the past in the present to steer an unruly future.
A natural history of love, Diane Akerman (1995)
G2 — Is the project trying to make
peope fall in love with each other?
Falling in love is a pleasant experience but cannot and should not be orchestrated. Therefore no, I am definitely not interested in creating the conditions or situations for people to fall in love with each other. This is not of my (or anyone's) business. Love relationships are personal matter and individuals should have full agency and opportunity in the way they decide to experience them. People all over the gender, romantic and sexual spectrum have each their own ways of living their love in space, and cities should be a celebration of that diversity and continue to evolve at the pace of the hearts of the lovers navigating them.
I have also attempted to display that love goes beyond romantic and sexual relationships. In section D, we've seen that the ground of this complex emotion is broader than amorous events and that it reaches deeper in our psyche and occupies a much wider significance at the societal level. While it does not exclude erotic/romantic love, this project treated love as a more far reaching direction that transcends erotic love. Diane Ackerman in her history of love uses the telling metaphor of a prism to illustrate the semantic and conceptual complexity of the emotion. On one side, the colourful spectrum representing all the types, experiences and variations of love — including romantic love — and on the other, the white light, symbolising the drive generating them. It is to that energy that the present project has been referencing. It has been not about controlling love but about imagining ways to let love some space in our conversations about city making.
Is the project taking into consideration the whole gender, romantic and sexual spectrums?
I have attempted in the context of this project to diversify my perspective as much as I could to project a more plural image. While efforts were put to gather a group of interviewees as diverse as possible, (see D5 for methodology or consult the written thesis) the participants assembled are far from being representative of the infinite plurality of human realities. They should instead be considered as an informative sample that draws a few portraits of a few representations of a few spatial dimensions of love.
"Love is a direction,
not a state of mind".
— Simone Weil
"Love is an orientation
and not a state of mind."
— Simone Weil
Structure of feeling : a term coined by Raymond Williams to describe the 'distilled lived experience' of an era over an above of its ideological framework. — Applying it here to the individual rather than to society.
For more on sadness: Four Ways Sadness May Be Good for You By BY JOSEPH P. FORGAS, The Greater Good Science Center at the University of California, Berkeley (2021)
For more on boredom: What Does Boredom Do to Us — and for Us? By Margaret Talbot, New Yorker Magazine (2020)
For more on the construction of emotion: How emotions are made? By Lisa Fieldman Barret, Pan (2017)
The negativity bias in academia: tendency to give more importance to negative phenomenon than to positive ones. A situation that pervades all spheres of research.
For more on cringe: Cringeworthy: A Theory of Awkwardness By Melissa Dahl, Scientific American (2018)
Why is the projected world showing a specifically "sweet" dimension of the atmosphere of love? What about the "less sweet" or "more bitter" side of it?
Love relationships (directed towards animate, inanimate or abstracted entities) are all over the emotional spectrum. Sometimes sad, occasionally frustrating, often boring, they manage like all relations to transport us in many bright but also dark corners of our personal structure of feelings. It is therefore important to underline the difference between the consequences of love (the situations and states it brings us into) and the direction of love (the world it points towards to).
In our personal lives, we learn progressively to name and identify our emotions more accurately. While these might always stay relatively fuzzy internal experiences, understanding when and why emotions arise help us as children and adults to make better decisions in the present. As it is with more "negative" emotions like sadness, for example, that reveals our need for support and self-care or for boredom — this very modern emotion — that represents our wish to care about what we are doing, more "positive" emotions are helping us as well to direct our decisions. Our brains construct these emotions in order to move towards positive, pleasant and engaging situations and away from the negative, unpleasant and disengaging ones.
The more precisely we understand the way and the reasons we feel, the easier it becomes to orient decisions. In the same way, at the cultural level, the spatial manifestation of positive emotions (like love) — the direction that its atmosphere is pointing towards, not its experience — can help orient decisions in the present.
Many dystopian projections have been doing a very good job at naming and visualising precisely some of our deepest fears and anxieties in order to help us orient our decisions in the present (Orwell's 1984 or Huxley's Brave New World being obvious examples). The specific projections they make of negative emotions are treated with respect due to the accuracy of the potential (but fictional) reality they portray. Because of the negativity bias that pervades every sphere of our lives and academic research, we accept that leaving aside the more positive aspects of our lives for the projection of a future can be tolerated in order to visualise more accurately a specific dimension of our cultural structure of feeling. However, when positive emotions like hope, love or happiness are projected with the same accuracy (leaving aside temporarily the more negative aspects of reality), they are decried as illusory, saccharine and sentimental displays of an unrealistic world.
This tendency to recognise certain chosen chunks of reality as more real than certain others (as though the crime, the pollution and the smell of urine of a city existed more than the moments of solidarity, magic and love experienced daily by its citizens) has left out parts of our emotional selves up for grabs and prone to manipulation. And that cringey feeling we get in front of the overly "sweet" is but one more proof of a clear defence mechanism that comes from the profession's ineptitude to express and grasp complex emotions. This project is an attempt to reclaim that chunk of reality: to name it, visualise it, face it, understand it and reappropriate the spatial world projected by the emotion of love by making it usable as a valid cultural tool.
[Essay 1b]
The Atmosphere of Love and the Films of Eric Rohmer
"The real counter-projecting measures of the fragmenting, isolating and alienating nature of modernity are whether or not the city fosters, generates and provides grounds for the fortuitous development of situations of interplay. — In short, whether or not a city is built upon love."
[Pilot Thesis]
Love : An Intention for Space
"Only through the experimental and ambiguous uncovering process of a spatiality of love, that responds to the shift we want to see happen in our social relations, will we be able to support the blossoming of the transformation of that world we want to live in."
"This paper attempted to do to love what Venturi Scott Brown did to fun and what Koolhaas did to cynicism. Present it as a valid concept, welcome it within architectural and urban thinking and invite the world to play with it."
[Implementation Essay]
A Script for Les Agnettes
"The story should be understood as a form of exofiction, in the sense that it finds essentially its roots in the concrete existence of real political, physical, social and economic conditions at play, but expands, in a fictional and romanced narrative, the strategies I am advancing to navigate the issues that lay in the way of the development of my design intentions."
