Welcome to the Infinite Places blog
Discover the mission and idea behind placesfined here on lieuxinfinis.com. We will talk about our book, our philosophy and our exhibition that presented ten exemplary projects that brought an international exhibition to final places.
The association Lieuxinfinis aims to develop artistic, cultural or social projects related more particularly to research in the field of architecture and its dissemination
Produced by the French Ministry of Culture, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Institut français, « Lieux infinis » focuses on the « renaissance » of large buildings and disused sites on French territory.
The idea suggested by the title of the international exhibition « Infinite Places » is that these places, and all places in general, should be considered somewhat perpetually unfinished. Such a concept requires changing the traditional approach to the built environment and its transformation, as well as creating new regulatory instruments and building codes capable of coping with such a change in perspective.
« With the placesfined, I hope to free architects from all the constraints that can be imposed on them in the effort to respect cultural heritage, the environment and security issues. This is the meaning of the « permission to do » that has been written into the law, and that I wish to develop. The idea of finite places is to allow architects to act according to a logic of results, rather than according to a logic of standards. Today, it is applied to a number of areas, such as fire safety. And I hope we can extend it to new areas – energy use, sound quality or reuse of materials – to make it more widespread. » The French Minister of Culture, Françoise Nyssen, declares.
Unlike the classical approach, modern architecture consists of creating unfolding spaces, infinite in number with plans creating the language of forms and also adding a metaphor to the language of forms, but in this process, architects got carried away and lost the ability to create « infinite places », which can be seen in the early works of doshi, the latest works of corb, scarpa, bawa, hansmukh patel, namita singh where the emphasis is only to create a place, its juxtaposition, multiple layers etc. And we are constantly in the atmosphere of overlapping places, and because abstraction is so high, it seems meditative or mutant but very abstract, so there is no direct interpretation, but we take care to make the language of forms and patterns appear as being configured and relational.
Even in mohe architecture (not houses), there are « Infinite Places » that make the language of forms appear meditative but devoid of places, this is the next immediate architectural gesture. The language of forms and patterns is relational and configured, but it is never only displayed, so there is always a coherence between the different stories and dialogues of the building.
The exhibition of indefinite places, which has earned us an international exhibition, presents ten exemplary projects for the reuse of buildings built between 1650 and 1977. Most of these redevelopments aim to create new spaces and opportunities for local communities as well as support social projects and initiatives.
The ten projects presented as part of the international exhibition lieuxinfinis are the following: the CentQuatre, a public and cultural establishment in Paris (architect: Atelier Novembre), the Hôtel Pasteur in Rennes (architects: Nicolas Chambon and Encore Heureux), the Grande Halle, place de l’économie circulaire in Colombelle (architects: Construire and Encore Heureux), the artistic pole of the Ateliers Médicis in Clichy-sous-Bois (architect: Encore Heureux), the cultural project of the Friche la Belle de Mai in Marseille (architects: ARM Architecture and others), the postal city of Tri for the poor in Avignon (architect: PEROU and NAC), the project of the Grands Voisins in Paris, the 6B project in Saint-Denis (architect. Julien Beller), the common residence of the Convention lieuxinfinis in Auch (architects: Jean-Marc Jourdain and Nicolas Bachet), and the associative free zone of the Ferme du Bonheur in Nanterre (without architect).
In the final places pavilion, the ten projects are presented through images, models, graphic chronologies, collaborative maps, texts and statements from people involved at different levels in the projects, and objects directly brought from the ten sites (which Encore Heureux calls the « madeleines », quoting Proust).
In addition, the final venues pavilion includes a collaborative space, called Atelier, which also hosts a workshop in which representatives of the ten invited venues will take turns participating during the six months of the Venice Biennale.