Dominique Lefrançois, Serge Wachter, Gouverner avec les habitants, Éditions Recherches, August 2021

Both representative and participatory democracy are in crisis today, and this particularly affects working-class neighbourhoods, where large social housing estates are concentrated. The involvement of residents in the policies that affect their housing and their living environment is, if not non-existent, at least very limited. Is such a lack of citizenship inevitable? No, because experiences of citizen mobilisation have been multiplying over the last few years, showing a growing awareness among residents of the issues at stake in the rehabilitation of their housing and public spaces in their neighbourhoods. At the same time, a participatory injunction, addressed to residents and users, is on the rise and is spreading to the various sectors of urban public action.
This book explores the merits and limitations of new instruments aimed at encouraging citizen participation in planning policies. Through an anthropological investigation, it also examines the barriers and possible means of improving the way in which the voice of citizens is taken into account in marginalized neighbourhoods. These reflections sketch out ways to implement new forms of local democracy that allow for governing with the inhabitants.

Caroline MANIAQUE, The Adventure of the Whole Earth Catalog, Les Productions du EFFA, 2021

The book tells the story of the birth, development and end of a "catalogue" that appeared in several versions from 1968 onwards, spread outside any traditional institutional and economic framework, sold more than a million copies in the United States and Europe and inspired European versions, notably, in France, Le Catalogue des Ressources. The Whole Earth Catalog informed its readers in very concrete terms about the latest research of the American counterculture on how to live differently: how to build a geodesic dome, make compost or design an architecture with a solar energy collection device, as well as the latest publications in the practical or scientific fields. The transformation of lifestyle was also addressed on a personal level, with, for example, the interest in yoga appearing in the background. The catalogue also combined an ecological approach, hippie sensibility and an interest in cybernetics. Paradoxically, it thus heralded the transformation of our societies by the new information technologies.

Valéry DIDELON, La déconstruction de la ville européenne : Euralille 1988-1995, Paris : Éditions de la Villette, June 2021, 160p.

At the turn of the 1990s, the city of Lille was the scene of one of the most commented and controversial urban planning operations of the end of the 20th century, not only locally, but also nationally and internationally. Known as Euralille, it concerned a 70-hectare sector around the new Tgv station that would soon put the capital of Flanders within an hour's drive of the great European metropolises: Paris, London and Brussels.
With some thirty years' hindsight, Valéry Didelon looks back at Euralille, which has become France's third largest business district, not so much in terms of its urban form or architectural style as in terms of the process that generated it and which reflects the neoliberal turn in city planning: a mixture of the decline of the welfare state, the rise of private operators and the crisis in the status of the architect-urban planner.
The book is thus organized around three main characters of this history, major actors and pioneers in their respective fields: Rem Koolhaas, a world-renowned Dutch architect who would become one of the greatest stars of architecture, Pierre Mauroy, the city's socialist mayor and a politician of national stature, and above all Jean-Paul Baïetto, the real manager of this project, creator of the semi-public company that financed it, and inventor in France, on this occasion, of the half-public, half-private figure of the "developer", which is today central to urban planning operations.
With a bibliography and an index, the book is completed by an unpublished interview with Rem Koolhaas, conducted by the author.

The main objective of this newsletter is to present the PhD students of the laboratory. Despite the context of the pandemic, which obliges us to postpone certain collective activities, we were keen to organise the Cultures of Research seminars in person. The one in March 2021 (n°6), during which we heard contributions from Natalia Petkova, Camille Lesouef and Tricia Meehan, was a success: we had 45 participants, the maximum capacity of the Duminy amphitheatre! The WebTV allowed us to reach a wider audience.
Have a good read!
Caroline Maniaque, Director of the ATE research unit

The RADIAL journal, linked to the RADIAN doctorate in research and creation, has just published its third issue on the theme of 'frugality'.

Among the articles written by academics, artists, and architects, this issue includes three texts directly related to architecture: Julie Beauté, Living with lichens: symbiotic perspectives on frugality in architecture; Dominique Gauzin Muller, From Critical Regionalism to Creative Frugality: The Return of Vernacular Architectural Materials; and Alexandre Melay, From the Aesthetics of Wabi to Contemporary Architectural Minimalism. In his column Varia, Research in Creation, Arnaud François, architect and senior lecturer atENSA Normandie, questions from an epistemological perspective different ways of articulating scientific research with artistic and architectural creation.

For all requests for paper copies, please contactEsadhar.

Marie J-B (dir.), Architecture et Expérimentaion, Rouen, ATE / Éditions des Méandres, 2020, 176 p.

Experimentation is on the rise, judging by its increasing importance in the daily life of architectural practices. Better still, it has established itself in architecture schools around the world as a new tool for learning by doing and as one of the protocols for research. However, this new modus operandi for architecture is not without its critics, because of its strong focus on the manipulation of matter or its lack of a theoretical corpus. Faced with the profound changes in the architectural profession, what role can experimentation play in the face of the new challenges of the ecological transition?

The book discusses the need for a new methodological framework to better control project processes: these involve renewing the system of actors - in particular by renewing the links between engineers and architects -, managing technological innovations at the service of the project, reinventing the dialogue between agencies and industry, and paying greater attention to user demands. Experimentation is thus examined within architectural agencies, through the role it plays in architectural education and as a tool for architectural research.

Book on request depending on stock availability

In the framework of the ARCHÉA programme - Architectural European Medium-sized City Arrangement

Programme of the European union 2018/2021