|
|
||||||
 |
||||||
 |
image | activities | contacts | links | italiano | |||||
|
|
||||||
|
introduction |
Located near Montparnasse, the École Spéciale d'Architecture is the
only private school in Paris. It was founded in 1865 by the engineer
Emile Trelat. As an independent school of architecture, ESA reacted
against the Beaux-Arts teaching by means of its contents and its opening
on the society. Architects as Viollet-le-Duc, engineers as F. de Lesseps
and other political, literature or industrial men endorsed the creation
of Trelat's new school. Officially recognised as being of "public utility"
from 1870 onwards, ESA enjoys the status of an independent association
in which, since 1968, students play a full part in the running of the
school by virtue of its Constitution.Robert Mallet Stevens obtained
his Diploma at ESA and taught there in 1924, followed by Auguste Perret
-author of the post-war reconstruction of Le Havre- and Henri Prost
who conceived the visionary town-plan for Casablanca; more recently,
Anatole Kopp and, since 1972, Paul Virilio. When first founded in 1865, ESA created specific courses oriented towards the needs of the evolving society: domestic hygiene and urban public health, innovative fields of the building construction, design of steel structure (1908), electrical services (1912), reinforced concrete (1913), heating and ventilation (1926), etc. The technical orientation of the courses is still developed today. With 400 students every year and 40% of them coming from 40 different countries worldwide, ESA reinforces its international status with partnerships of students' exchanges with 19 other schools from Europe, Asia and America. Olivier Leblois, director |
 Installation at the Stazione Leopolda, Florence (photo by: Omar Cotza) |
||||
| A13
Case Study (Fall 02) Instructor: Odile Decq |
||||||
Un(e) Air(e) d’Autoroute by Olivier Campanyo, Martin Mercier, Philippos Gregoriadis, Emilie Depond So, to work on the A13 case study is a way to reinterpret our way of living. Connecting two points with a line, the highway is a space in 2D and an un-place. Although A 13 is only 18 kilometers long between Delft and Rotterdam, and the time spent on it is 3/4 of an hour, the task of the studio, divided into 9 projects, is to give it the status of a place to live that fits the natural or urban context it crosses. The project From Metropole to Metapole extends the highway through the city to bring infrastructure to people. It takes the status of a continuous-blurred-metapolitan-highway. The Air(e) d’Autoroute is creating a generic environment by re-cycling the exhaust gas as an energetic potential to destroy the pollution itself. The Multipurpose Highway uses different development in technologies -such as automatic navigation, platforms, cars for flexible uses- and generates the Connectors which make the link between highway and cities. The Mechanic Sidewalk proposes an alternative autodrive solution to change the use of a motorway as another living place . People could live differently during the time of their daily journeys. The VIA identifies generic problems that may lead to visionary solutions that could be applied at a larger scale for a long term development of the Holland Avenue. The 4D TRANSIT wants the highway to respond to its different surrounding, to give transitions and new perspectives. Feeling space while moving through time. That is 4D TRANSIT. The Interactive Energy takes advantage of the fact that the highway produces sound and proposes to shape the landscape with the sound wave. The Le Chemin-The Perceptual Highway creates a cohabitation of motorways and the surrounding fabric by separating the lanes of the different types of traffic. The Mobility Centre uses the spaghetti as a place for short stay living for mobile people and could be designed as a part of the landscape. Coursework from the "A13 Case Study" studio was exhibited at the First Biennale of Rotterdam (Mobility), curated by Francine Houben, in 2003. |
Odile Decq (1955) graduated in architecture in Paris in 1978 and received her diploma in Urbanism and planning in 1979 from the Institute of Political Studies. In 1985 she founded a partnership with Benoit Cornette and in 1990 they won a competition for the project of two buildings for the Banque Populaire de l’Ouest, in Rennes which brought them a large international notoriety. Odile Decq is Member of the French Architecture Academy since 1997 and Commander of the Ordre des Arts et Lettres since 2001. She has taught for the past ten years at the Ecole Spéciale d’Architecture of Paris and has been invited as visiting professor to several institutions, among which TU in Vienna, The Bartlett in London and Columbia University. | |||||
| Utopia
for Paris (ESA and Columbia University, Fall 01) Instructor: Odile Decq |
||||||
Paris in motion by Guillaume Letschert Thomas More’s Utopia (1516) was based on a critic of institutions and life conditions of his time. He proposed a counter model for social and space organisation. Others models of utopia where developed during the following centuries. After World War II many people declared that the age of utopia was gone and left space for the age of realism. But during the Sixties, spontaneity and power of imagination were proclaimed in Europe and in the US. After futurism, the hippies, Archigram, metabolism and others invented a new world based on the return to nature or on the strong belief in technology. Progressively, in the movies the future was seen as something coming "after the destruction of Earth by an ecological disaster". Then, the Berlin wall destruction put communism down which had been perceived before as a possible future. M. Simecka says that "a world without utopia would be a world without social promises, a world of resignation to a status quo and to devaluated arguments of political life day after day". The theme of the studio will focus on the city of Paris. What is named Paris is still the town limited by the 19th century enclosure. Beyond that is the banlieue. A Parisian never goes to the banlieue. More than 50% of people living in Paris are singles. Families live in the banlieue or more and more in other cities in France. In march 2001 Paris elected the first socialist mayor. He promised to change the Parisians' life, to adapt the city to them. His first action was to create kilometers of cycles corridors in the streets! And he declared, during summer, that he wants to take out the cars from the city. We will try to help him with a stronger vision for the future of Paris! |
||||||
| Brussels
Capital of Europe for the 21st century (Spring 02) Instructor: Odile Decq |
||||||
Ninove by Alexandre Schrepfer, Lorenzo Sangiorgi, Guillaume Letschert Since January 2001, nine countries accepted Euro. Without economical borders, it is the time in Europe for more and more unification and exchanges. Brussels is the city where the main European institutions are based. It is still the capital of Belgium, which is divided in three regions: Flemish, Walloon and Brussels. But the unification of Belgium is less and less true. In March 2002, Flemish opened a representative embassy in Paris. The “Pentagon” is the historical Brussels enclosed in the traces of the ancient fortification. Around the region of Brussels developed. The ancient bed of the Senne river (canalized and moved apart) has been given to the train which crosses the city. During the fifties and the sixties, the city center has been opened to offices towers, European administrations and motorways coming in. In the seventies there were fights for the re-conquest of history against modernity often perceived as too brutal. Brussels is one of the more post-modernist cities in Europe. Instead of having a chaotic identity trying to refer to its history, could Brussels be re-thought as an entity with a new identity: the capital of Europe? Brussels : a 3D city. The territory is the permanent, the city is the movement. The traditional convergence of concentration on the surface of the territory creates congestion and implosion. The hyper-City of today is built of networks, fluctuating structures and superimposition of multiple layers which give density and possible extension to the urban condition. So, the new urbanscape is mixity, networks and evolution. From the 2D city to the 3D city. Buildings as green as public spaces are disconnected from the traditional urban tissue. The frames are fluid and mobile. They follow the evolution of way of living, of working, of leisure and learning. Functions are temporarily established. Structures cover needs in constant evolution. The city leaves its rigid permanence to win a lively nature. students: Amar Al Ali, Joel Andrianomearisoa, Liat Bakshi, Douglas Benchetrit, Olaf Behrens, Romain Burrowes, Alberto Cagiga, Olivier Campanyo, Karim Ceballos, Mario Cruzate, Matthieu De Genot De Nieukerken, Rafaele De Le Via, Emilie Depond, Emir Drahsan, Jason Duraneo, Betty El Kassis, Gal Gabriel, Firmin Galan, Jean Gousseau, Philippos Gregoriadis, Cairel Gubbing, Pravda Hadas, Yann Hellmann, Mari Igesund, Tomas Janka, Alexandra Jerieski, Katherine Kosalski, Micha Lavi, King Keing Lee, Stephane Lacroix, Guillaume Letschert, Lior Marom, Louis-Rolland Martin, Martin Mercier, Mabel Miranda, Aime-Issa Nthepe, Cedric Pak Kei Tang, Jean-Etienne Pernot, Niovi Plyriala, Antoine Pradels, Romina Sanchez, Lorenzo Sangiorgi, Alexandre Schrepfer, Ana Siu, Oystein Sjostrand, Jose-Carlos Valdivia, Julie Wagner, Janet Wai Yee Chan, Brandon Walt, Isabell Ziegler. |
||||||
| site
hosted by ARCH'IT rivista digitale di architettura  www.architettura.it |
||||||
