Exhibiting four years of modelling workshops
For four years, the Urbanités Numériques En Jeux project, carried out within the IRI, had pupils in Seine-Saint-Denis work on their playground, their neighbourhood and then the surroundings of the Olympic Village. We designed a travelling exhibition to show their proposals to the public and to the people who shape these places.
The route through the exhibition, designed with the architects of O'zone Architectures, follows this change of scale. For each place, it shows the workshops and what the pupils modelled on the project's server, with renderings made in Blender.
The playground
Six schools worked on their playground between 2020 and 2022. Pupils surveyed it, noted what works and what does not, then built a proposal that they presented to a jury. Their ideas were passed on to the architects and to the Département, which was then preparing its “oasis playgrounds”.
Collège Dora Maar, Saint-Denis, 2021-2022
The playground was shared between uses that got in each other's way. The pupils proposed arranging them in stages, from a space left to biodiversity to the most energetic games, with quiet areas in between. They also imagined an adventure garden, with trees to talk under and others to climb. The architect in charge of the redesign changed his project to take it into account.
The neighbourhood
The pupils then went outside their school. They explored a place they use, rebuilt it in Luanti and proposed ways to transform it. At this scale, they had to talk about water, parking and heritage, and meet elected officials and developers. When a consultation was under way on the site, the proposals were fed into it.
La Vieille Mer, Collège Henri Barbusse, Saint-Denis, 2021-2022
La Vieille Mer is a buried river that runs along the school. The 12- and 13-year-old pupils propose to bring it back to the surface, to cross it with footbridges and bridge buildings, to collect rainwater for the plants and to set up sports grounds that can flood when the river rises.
The Water Village
In June 2022, a hundred pupils from five schools built together, in one day and on a single server, a water village on the Seine, with a swimming pool, a marina, riverside cafés and playgrounds on the banks. The day is described on a page of its own.
The Mail Finot, 2023-2024
In the final year, three schools shared the Mail Finot, a walkway that runs from the Collège Dora Maar down to the Seine through the Olympic Village. The pupils turned it into a route leading to a viewpoint over the river, with seating under the trees that can be used as terraces. The classes joined their parts together during a shared session at the Serre Wangari, in Saint-Ouen, then presented the result at the Archives nationales.
