RISING MEASURES
DRAWING OVER THE CITÉS HLM IN GREATER PARIS
The contrast between living conditions in Paris and its struggling suburbs is unsettling. Away from the determined form and defined structure of the city lies the constellation of disembodied suburbs, increasingly violent and segregated. The research project investigates the potential means to transform the living conditions in the Cités HLM by investigating two different scales: 1) Larger scale urban/ suburban strategies and 2) housing prototypes adaptations to allow the Cités HLM to become truly livable environments.
Identifying six of the most critically violent and underprivileged suburbs in the North East of Paris, the research invests in analytical and creative processes of transforming these areas. Looking critically at the “Grand Paris” initiative, launched by the former French President Nicholas Sarkozy in 2007, the proposal posits that in order to make the larger metropolitan area functional and prosperous, there is a need to address the particulars issues of its “Petits Paris” to connect the smaller, often segregated entities of the sprawling suburbs to the larger and more defined body of the city. On the one hand, speculating at the scale of the territory, the project investigates infrastructure, transportation, wastewater control and ecology in order to better integrate these areas to the Metropolitan Paris. On the other hand, calling upon in-situ observations, the research will develop alternative housing proposals for these suburban areas. The project has so far completed an initial study of threshold and boundaries of public/ private in an article titled: Fostering Resilience in a Vulnerable Terrain, published at int|AR: Resilience and Adaptability in Built Interventions and Adaptive Reuse, Volume 5, 2014, A studio taught at RISD’s INTAR Department continued with the investigation in a collective mode. A paper titled: Rising Measures published in the Journal of Architectural Education in 2015, studies the outcome of the investigation and its potentials. The project is currently studying the notion of ground: common, abandoned and all forms in between, in these areas.
The research has been supported by a Professional Development Grant (2013) and the Bridge Grant (2015) from RISD.