Collectif GRAU

Since urbanization first began, the city has been the space where we live together: the fact that it provides opportunity, safety, and work, and fulfills our need to connect, is just one of the many reasons that bring us together. Living together in a certain environment requires collective organization, and this always takes a physical form.

We’re interested in the relationship between the existing physical environment and the social structures we build. In all our projects, we seek to understand what basic physical structures are required for people to successfully share the same space. It’s a question of balance between what the public sector offers as a structure and what people do with it–and what kinds of appropriation and freedom are possible.

During our residency at the Villa Albertine, we wanted to examine this link by investigating the relationship residents have with the physical world, and in particular with the grid (road network), which forms such a ubiquitous part of the American urban landscape. That grid, often used to its full potential in dense neighborhoods, allowing for considerable intensity, seems in other cases to eliminate any urban character, especially in lower density areas. As a physical structure, this grid is also intimately linked to livability conditions.

Our project is called “Collective America.” For one month, we met with a raft of Chicagoans, from downtown and other areas. By drawing and writing about their views of the city, and how they interact with the grid structure, we endeavored to understand how they can create opportunities to collectively re-engage with the physical aspect of the city.

These views were published as a collection, and all content were produced on site in real time, during the residency.

Our project focuses on the city of Chicago, where a new urban plan, “We Will Chicago,” is taking shape. While not yet complete, it already signals a new ambition: the people of today will be “the city of tomorrow”. It can be read as a shift in the ways we think about and build our cities, reminding us that architecture and the grid, while ubiquitous, are merely assumptions that must be re-examined every day.

Our work lies at the cross-section between the residents of Chicago, their physical living conditions (in buildings) and the urban grid, to reveal alternative visions of the city to the one we’re generally familiar with.

We also want to draw a link between Chicago and Greater Paris, where we live and work, by exploring the notion of metropolitan identity and what elements we can actually draw on to live and act together.

This exploration of Chicago is a continuation of our daily work. As applied research, our project methodology is based on the reality on the ground, and the link between the social and physical conditions we find there.

While our research is not intended to be a project per se, we sparked a dialogue with Chicago residents and bodies, and provided an opportunity to delve deeper either into our own practice, or expand our academic knowledge as part of our teaching activities.