Workshop of planning and urban design for students and young professionnels

27 August – 23 September 2011 at Paris / Cergy-Pontoise

 

An outsanding urban operation, La Défense is both a fascinating and repulsive district, and as such, it leaves no one cold. A unique district, created to protect Paris’s historical skyline, all the while facing the needs of large business spaces inside towers during the booming period of the tertiary economy. Thirty hectares of public space served by one of the most powerful transport hub in the region, with remarkable architecture landmarks, major national and international companies headquarters: La Défense is one the major polarities of the Parisian metropolis and a living environment for thousands of employees, inhabitants and visitors.

 

For a long time, La Défense was defined as an urban planning operation, continuing Paris’s historical axis, granted with a privileged connection to the city’s center. But few things have been said about its  home territory, the housing areas, large housing projects, industrial fabrics, and about the infrastructures and the geographical and natural entities of its territory.  Rooted in its historical connection with Paris’s city center, La Défense was seen as the capital’s growth for a long time. But in the on-going metropolitan reshaping, the district is now taking place inside a more complex scheme.

 

The almost exclusive dialogue between La Défense and the capital city is becoming a conversation with the many cities of Paris’s Western outskirts, and the axis structure is transforming into a varied connections network.

 

The choice to build the business district in Paris’s Western area and the strong financial involvment of the State has subsequently increased the speed of the territory’s mutation and created wealth as well as discrepancies. Space discrepancies because of the transport structures, urban discrepancies because of the piling up of old houses with new buildings, and social discrepancies because of the coexistence of many social classes who don’t interact. The urban and economic mutation has been swift, impressive and generally profitable for the territory, but it left some scars inside the urban fabrics and created some disorders for men and women as well. The planning process must now go beyond the sole economic challenge.

 

In the future, environmental, social and economic evolutions create new challenges for the business district and its welcoming territory. The depletion of natural ressources, the carbon emissions and the global warming has been occuring for dozens of years and the consequences are apparent. The ability to live together, the social and functional diversity appears to be essential to the social harmony and the quality of life, whereas the increasing land price trend tends to separate people and functions. These evolutions will shake the core facts and, for example, shake the economic system that is leaning on lowcost oil.  How to foresee these evolutions for the business district and its home territory?

 

During four weeks, with a medium and long-term vision, leaning on the global evolutions and the local reshaping process, the participants will focus on this major polarity of Paris’s Western area. The next 40 years, until 2050, is matching the term of their professional career (given the average age of the participants: 25 years). What are their evaluations of the future, their strategies for cities to adapt  to the expected changes, where do they want to lead this district and this territory?

 

And for those who won’t have had enough, they can go to the 24^th World Congress of Architecture – UIA 2011 that will take place straight after the workshop, between the 25/09/2011 and the 01/10/11 in Tokyo, Japan, under the title „Design 2050“.  (www.uia2011tokyo.com).

 

Christian Horn, head of the leading committee