PUSHING THE BOUNDARIES: The Forum too is starting “home delivery”!
In this strange and unprecedented period for each of us, our cultural practices are hindered in their usual convivial forms, our lifestyles are disrupted daily, and, more fundamentally, our worldview is profoundly shaken.
The Forum of Urbanism and Architecture, in solidarity with all the cultural institutions of the City of Nice, has helped to formalize an online offer intended to provide citizens with a diverse and multidisciplinary cultural window, which we can only invite you to open again and again: https://cultivez-vous.nice.fr. It is, in a way, an attempt to dispel the impression of confinement by not being able to leave home to go to a concert or attend a dance performance, to see an exhibition or a film.
The Forum naturally wished to react with its own tools precisely to this feeling of confinement related to the built environment that surrounds us, the walls of our home. We, who are accustomed to presenting architecture, the city, and the landscape as sensitive environments full of meaning, aesthetic pleasures, and freedom, cannot accept the idea that our familiar walls, those of our “confined” homes, could be experienced today, as a reversal effect, as a constraint, as elements that limit or even oppress us.
As a result, we questioned ourselves within the team, as well as with some of our recent contributors (speakers, exhibition curators, architects, designers, or theorists of architecture and the city, whether from Nice or elsewhere), about the response we could offer to, in some way, “push the boundaries”.
The idea is to provide keys to view and experience in a light, surprising, or stimulating way this “box” which is, for an indefinite period, our limited universe โ especially since the time to do so is now offered to us in abundance.
Small video formats, compilations of texts and drawings, playbooks for children and families, carte blanche offered to regulars of the Forum will thus be gradually shared on our Facebook page, on the Forum’s website, and on 109’s site to invite looking at and exploring one’s house or apartment differently, to see city or landscape with new eyes from oneโs window or during permitted outings, to engage children or families in shared creative activitiesโฆ
“Pushing the boundaries” is therefore both a mantra and a series of actions.
It is first the title of a carte blanche that we have proposed to various personalities from the world of architecture, and very soon you will discover, one after the other, the proposals already formalized or under development from urbanists at Deux Degrรฉs, architects Mylรจne DUQUENOY or Paul VINCENT, architectural historian รve ROY, artist and architecture school teacher-researcher Anne-Valรฉrie GASC, and designer Marc FERRAND (to name a few).
To push the boundaries, you will also find in our online offer playbooks related to past exhibitions, for which simple research on the Internet (which will be part of the “game”) can make up for not being able to visit the exhibitions in person. You will also find playbooks specially created for the occasion, all offering convivial moments for parents and children.
Finally, we will offer you keys to experiencing remotely our exhibition, which is now inaccessible to the public, on the villa built in Vence by architect Guy Rottier for sculptor Arman, through contributions requested from the exhibition curators, but also from the current residents, confined in this remarkable house whose genesis is analyzed in our exhibition “Les Variations Arman, orchestration by Guy Rottier”.
Confinement does not kill Culture! To that end, follow our news, stay tuned with usโฆ as we remain in tune with you. Do not put to sleep your curiosity for architecture, the city, and the landscape: we will look after it, precisely! See you very soon!
PUSHING THE BOUNDARIES #1: deux degrรฉs
Deux degrรฉs (Bordeaux)
deux degrรฉs is both a territorial mediation agency, an urban laboratory, and a publishing house, initially bringing together urbanists, who have gathered around them other professionals over the course of their projects (geographers, illustrators, designers, graphic artistsโฆ). It thinks and acts on the connections between users, lifestyles, and territories, offering an offbeat and playful perspective on planning and societal changes, a precious condition to attempt new approaches and involve more actors in a broad shared process.
Matthieu ZIMMER, geographer-urbanist, and Ulrich LEGAIT, physicist-author, gave a lecture titled “Can we carry out a project if we have no story to tell?” at the invitation of the Forum on December 12, 2017.
The proposal from deux degrรฉs
Due to confinement, we are stuck at home. But home is not necessarily the ideal place. So why not take this moment to imagine the ideal place post-confinement? This is what Mathieu ZIMMER, geographer (at deux degrรฉs (https://www.deuxdegres.net/) and Youpi la France (https://youpilafrance.fr/), proposes by drawing these imaginary territories based on a wish list from friends or strangers, five of which are revealed here.
Constraints = zero.
Realism = it depends.
Interest = surely!
Itโs your turn to play!
The Forum, in collaboration with deux degrรฉs and Youpi la France, invites its audience to “order” their ideal post-confinement place.
Simply define the following elements for yourself: what ideal place? where? what? with whom?, and send them by email to: forum@ville-nice.fr.
They will be forwarded to Mathieu ZIMMER who, according to his inspiration, will draw some other customized territories, which will then be put online by the Forum.
YOUNG AUDIENCE AND FAMILY ACTIVITIES
PLAYBOOK #1: “MY SUSTAINABLE CITY” (workshop 1)
With this playbook, which you will discover in three parts to give you time to have fun, you will be able, alone, aided by your parents or siblings, to explore the neighborhood around the old slaughterhouses of Nice, build and imagine sustainable buildings and a city, that is to say, thought in harmony with nature and the environment.
Have fun!
Here are the links for your fun in PDF format:
Introduction
Workshop 1 (7-11 years old)
THE PRINCIPLE OF PLAYBOOKS
Even though the Forum remains physically closed to the public due to the health crisis, we do not want our connection with you all and our activity offerings to be interrupted, and we wish to continue accompanying, in particular, the young audience and families in the creative discovery of architecture.
We offer you a chance to revisit two past exhibitions from the Forum, which had sparked great enthusiasm among children and their parents during our guided tours. We have also developed two other activities allowing you to replicate at home creative activities (through drawing or modeling) that also provided us with great moments together in our mediation room.
Now at home, you will be accompanied step by step by a very detailed PDF document, available at once (for the exhibitions) or to be discovered in several episodes to give time to accomplish each step of the practical creative workshops in a way that suits each personโs age.
Feel free to take photos of yourself or your creations and send them to us if you wish to see them published online.
