Exploring Urban Transformations: An In-depth Analysis of Festival des Cabanes as a co-production of public spaces in Lille

Abstract

As part of a collaboration between MetroForum (the Chair for Metropolitan Transitions at the University of Lille) and WAAO (the Lille Centre for Architecture and Urban Planning), we are offering a presentation and analysis of public spaces based on the Festival des Cabanes. The Festival des Cabanes is a year-long event that brings together local authorities, associations, architects and the general public to design, build and install huts (cabanes) in various public spaces across the city.

This paper is an opportunity to present a reflexive study of public space(s), which we are questioning on the basis of fieldwork and the discourse of those involved, in order to provide “food for thought” on this polysemous concept. Public spaces are understood here as 'physical place(s) that create(s) social links (the public square)' (Aubin 2013: 2). Taken together, these elements make it possible to move away from the 'classic' software of planning and construction, proposing a break with the past by creating spaces for experimentation, sharing and co-elaboration in the city.

Through the construction of huts, archetypal architectural objects considered a priori for their own sake, the project in reality embodies a much broader form of production of public spaces and involves co-production between players (metropolis, towns, companies, associations, the public, etc.).

We approach this initiative as a moving process that raises questions at every stage. From the search for sites to set up the huts to the life of the huts after the festival, not forgetting the guided tours, the relationship with the landscape and mobility... We see these huts and their integration into the chosen environment as a way of awakening imaginations and collectively questioning our everyday natural environment.

The huts are experiments that call into question the "role of the designer, negotiating the consideration of different types of knowledge (professional, user, political), but also, in the background, different representations and images of the city" (Bacqué and Gauthier 2011: 23). The route will be unique in that it will run along the banks of the Deûle (canal) through ten or so communes.

From negotiation with elected representatives to define the public spaces that are available and appropriate (safety, regulations, conflicts of use, etc.) to their appropriation by residents (a category that we are defining on the ground), this initiative highlights the complexity of public spaces as places to live, to pass through and to experience conflict. In Lille, for example, they will be installed in urban gaps to revive neglected living spaces.

Finally, the reflective work carried out alongside the installations, through the involvement of residents and users and the dissemination of its productions, is also designed to raise public awareness of the research and reflection process around our ways of living in the city, and to give the festival a dual dimension of experimentation and collective reflexivity.