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The ongoing urban transformation
in France and in the so-called globalized world, has increased by altering
the perception of the modern city as an urban entity defined by shapes and
spaces. The current complexity of cities seems to be a disordered succession
of simply made up volumes without a formal order, without an urban logic.
The concept of metropolis (“Metropole”), stressed in the title of our
national pavilion, is what today's cities have actually rejected. With his
exhibition, Curator Domininque Perrault questions the concept of emptiness
and its protective material, from which one could start to reconstruct the
New Metropolis.
To illustrate these concepts, Perrault has invited five stars of the
French urbanistic scene: the “Metropolises” of Bordeaux, Lyon, Marseille and
Nantes, and the “International Atelier du Grand Paris”. Five experiments,
five ways to connect with the void volume, five proposals for a new
metropolis conceived as raw material rather than physical territory.
All the proposals presented in this Biennale directed by Japanese archi-star
Kazuyo Sejima are willing to find the meeting point between architecture and
man. Thus, our French Pavilion presents a clever exploration of images and
sounds, shapes and emptiness, built up as a sensorial experience that
enables our senses to think the new metropolis as a whole and understand its
true nature and dimension.
Dominique Perrault argues that the "empty spaces " represent 95% of the five
selected urban areas, the "full" (built spaces) representing only about 5%
of these territoires.
The Venice French Pavilion, which dates back to
1912, will also be empty.
Perrault has thus chosen to rely only on images
to show his demonstration to be true.
The room walls are used as notches or covered with mirrors. Inside the main
room, is screened a set of films titled "Metropolis?", by Perrault and
Richard Copans, founder of Films d'Ici.
They try to show
this urban "empty".
One lasts 15 minutes: we sort of leave the center of the five cities to get
to the extreme metropolitan outskirts and in these territories are set the
new projects that the movie is presenting.
Bordeaux (habitat, water in streams, movements ); Lyon (Lyon Confluence 1,
Lyon Confluence 2, etc.), Marseille (the metropolis on the move; parallel
paths; coast sequences); Nantes (the territory, the Estuary, EuroNantes )
and the Greater Paris. Five experiments, five ways to bind together solids
and voids, five proposals for the definition of the metropolis seen rather
as a territory than just a physical mass.
Five examples, treated in the form of films and screened as projections of
texts, staged in a very cinematic way. We’re almost into a sort of
installation in whose screens and mirrors, through a constant dialogue, an
enveloping effect of scaling images is finally created, enhanced by a
background noise made up of urban rumours and sounds. We could almost dive
into these images and these sounds, a sensorial experience that allows you
to feel, suffer, even grasp the concept of metropolis in all its vastity.
September 21st |
