For the sixth time, the Fondation Braillard Architectes is organising the Transition Seeds webinar series, which gives recent graduates in architecture, urban planning and landscape architecture the opportunity to present their final-year work publicly. This year, the overarching theme, entitled “Thought and Unthought”, explores how to describe, measure, design and produce a new generation of projects that meet the needs of decarbonisation and resilience, while avoiding the losses along the way and the misunderstandings heightened by political fog and technological misconceptions.
INHABITING AND WELCOMING
Saving the world. That must be our commitment, and to achieve it, we need a transition. Not only an ecological one, but a social one as well. These are not separate transitions unfolding in parallel and independently of one another, but a holistic transition that takes into account a range of interdependent societal issues, like interlocking gears that keep the (urban) machine turning. We must rethink, build and live in the city differently. We must move beyond and overturn a functional urbanism that serves productive adults, in order to revitalise our cities and territories by placing the most vulnerable people at the heart of the issues, so as to develop a new society that is inclusive, welcoming and resilient. To this end, we must question, untangle and at times break down existing urban structures in order to open them up to everyone. After all, who has the right to the city?
The work presented at this conference sets out to tell the story of new urban philosophies, to shift perspectives, to challenge convictions and to inspire, in both architecture and urban planning, a better city tomorrow for us all. Whether for our children, our elders or vulnerable people fleeing their countries, our projects explore ways and methods of envisioning a more caring urbanism by placing these people, their needs and their urgent concerns at the centre of our thinking.
Speakers
- Veronika De Castro, architect and urban planner, Master in Territorial Development (MDT) – University of Geneva – HES-SO
THE CHILD, PLAY AND THE CITY
In search of the “playable” dimension of urban space
The aim of this research was to convey the importance, necessity and potential of child-oriented urban planning, to highlight the central role of play in the relationship between the city and the child, and to show how it can be integrated into urban space. It emerges that a playable city is green, inclusive and intergenerational. It is an accessible city, one that people can make their own, a city of proximity, of encounters and interactions. In short, it is the city of tomorrow that we wish for. And not only for children, but for all of us.
But what does “playable” mean for the design, planning and making of a city? By setting out the foundation of all playability, together with the principles of playable design and the fields of action that follow from them, this work brings us closer to an understanding of the concept and contributes to the urban narrative of play.
- Flavien Paronitti,
architect, Joint Master of Architecture Fribourg (JMA-FR) – HEIA-FR – HES-SO
SUSTAINABLE HOSPITALITY
Rethinking the reception of asylum seekers in our cities
Switzerland has a long tradition of offering asylum to vulnerable people. Yet since the end of the last century, the asylum sector has seen one headline and scandal after another: “violence” and “deplorable humanitarian conditions” appear all too often in our newspapers.
In the face of this bitter observation, we may ask ourselves: are we still capable of welcoming with dignity those made vulnerable by war, disaster or persecution?
This work seeks to answer a political question through architecture, and therefore by placing human beings at the centre of its thinking.
It aims to support a transition towards an urbanism that is more socially, culturally and ecologically sustainable, capable of offering people from an asylum background spaces that foster expression, autonomy and fulfilment within the host society.
To welcome is, above all, to open oneself.
It is by establishing new methods for planning our cities and territories, across different scales and dimensions, from the city to the neighbourhood and down to architectural projects, that we will be able to develop an urbanism that is both resilient and welcoming.
Respondent
- Marc Breviglieri, sociologist, associate professor at the HES-SO Geneva School of Social Work and researcher at the CRESSON laboratory
Join the webinar
Register on Zoom
