Hung up

Since 2009, the Seine-Saint-Denis County Council has been backing “la Culture et l’Art au Collège (CAC)”. This project is based to a large extent on the presence in class for several weeks (40h) of an artist or scientist whose mission is to engage the students in a process of research and creation

Tutors: Nathalie Couineau, Sonia Leclercq, Louise Granger/ architects

Project manager: Mathieu Marion

Objectives:
How can we leave the ground without floating in the air? This is literally a project in which architecture, whether a shelter, a city or a house, has to be imagined hung up. “Hung up where?” the pupils will ask, and it will be up to them to imagine where, in relation to their utopias and, above all, to the ties that they would like to be freed from for a while.
In architecture, when a construction leaves the ground, it is often to look at the world in a different way.

Workshops:
A critical view
Under the tutor’s guidance, the class looked at, compared and asked questions about various areas. To test the limits of these places, open up new perspectives and push out the boundaries of their imaginations, the pupils had to work like "scanners": they were encouraged to take a critical view of the city, hunting for anomalies and unknowns. The class also explored the idea of the "Spatial City" imagined by the architect Yona Friedman.

Approaching the project
This part of the project involved meeting a need by imagining a building, finding a possible site in the immediate environment (school, neighbourhood, etc., ), physically exploring the site, learning to use creative and technical tools, drawing an original design on paper and providing supporting documents (text, photos, testimonies).

Building the model
The final stage involved bringing together objectives and constraints, observation and sketches, a creative approach, knowledge and technical know-how: the group selected, measured, adjusted scales, cut and pasted, added colour, built the model and finally presented the finished project.

Outcome:
Each class showed and explained its project through a choice of models, images, drawings and texts and handed out a 20-page booklet containing a selection of their work.

Outings (selection):
- 20TH-CENTURY ARCHITECTURE, CITÉ DE L’ARCHITECTURE ET DU PATRIMOINE, PARIS
- VISITS TO THE ARCHITECTS’ OFFICE “DES CLIQUES ET DES CALQUES”, PARIS.
- VISIT TO THE PAVILLON DE L’ARSENAL, PARIS.
- VISIT TO THE ÉCOLE NATIONALE SUPÉRIEURE D'ARCHITECTURE DE PARIS-LA VILLETTE. DISCUSSION OF UTOPIAS WITH ARCHITECTURE STUDENTS.

Participating schools:
- Class (5th) Collège Anatole France, Pavillons-sous-Bois
- Class (4th SEGPA) Collège Saint-Exupery, Rosny-sous-Bois
- Class (5th) Collège Jules Michelet, Saint-Ouen