Towards Earthly Cities

Villa Albertine presents City/Cité – Towards Earthly Cities, a program inviting professionals from Atlanta and Marseille and the public to learn together about urban ecology and the future of our cities. City/Cité – Towards Earthly Cities is presented at the Atlanta Design Festival 2023, as part of France-Atlanta. Join our rich program, including talks, exhibitions, a workshop and a public walk in Southeast Atlanta.

City/Cité is a transatlantic cooperation and exchange program on urban issues and city making, initiated by Villa Albertine. City/Cité has helped create partnerships between cities, where they can share their experiences and explore new ways of making their cities better: Chicago & Paris, Oakland & Saint-Denis, and, as of 2022, Atlanta & Marseille are all working together.

In the Fall of 2022 in Atlanta, during the first edition of City / Cité – Atlanta x Marseille, urban ecology emerged as one of the key areas of future cooperation between the two cities. These meetings were followed in April 2023 by an invitation to Atlanta’s urban ecology professionals to Terres communes, a program organized in Marseille by the Cité de l’Agriculture and the Bureau des Guides. 

A new episode in this dialogue between Atlanta and Marseille, City/Cité – Towards Earthly Cities offers, as part of Atlanta Design Festival and France-Atlanta, a program focusing on urban ecologies, and their ability to transform the way we make cities by renewing our relationship with the land.  The program is designed around a workshop and a public walk, exhibitions and talks, focusing on metropolitan trails and urban agriculture, rivers and forests, sustainable architecture and the integration of cities with their natural ecosystems. It will explore the fertile relationship between ecology, culture and urban policy, and bring together urban development professionals and communities in Atlanta and Marseille.

TALKS

October 14 | 10:40 am | In the Forests: Cities and the Future of Design in Collaboration with the More-Than-Human World with Christina Shivers & Andrew Todd | Atlanta Design Festival, Fourth Ward Offices Atlanta

October 14 | 11:30 am | Towards Ecological Cities: a French-American Dialogue with Whitney Barr, Darryl Haddock, Paul-Hervé Lavessière & Marion Waller | Atlanta Design Festival, Fourth Ward Offices Atlanta

October 14 | 12:30 pm | Walking on Earth: Imagining a Metropolitan Trail in Atlanta with Hannah Palmer & Carley Rickles | Atlanta Design Festival, Fourth Ward Offices Atlanta

EXHIBITIONS

October 14 | 6pm | Opening of The Art of Metropolitan Trails | Atlanta Design Festival, Fourth Ward Offices Atlanta

October 14 | 6pm | Opening of Where the Rivers Meet | Atlanta Design Festival, Fourth Ward Offices Atlanta

WORKSHOP & PUBLIC WALK

October 11-13 | City/Cité – Walking on Earth: Imagining a Metropolitan Trail in Atlanta | A 3-day workshop with architects, urbanists, artists, and students to imagine a metropolitan trail in Atlanta

October 15 | 9am | Walking on Earth: Southeast Atlanta Public Walk | Five Points Marta Station

Associate Curator: Alexandre Field (Ecole Nationale Supérieure d’Architecture de Marseille / Bureau des guides)

Including: Whitney Barr (Food Systems Innovation Fellow for the City of Atlanta’s Office of Sustainability and Resilience), j. olu baiyewu (Director of Urban Agriculture, City of Atlanta’s Office of Sustainability and Resilience), Stéphane Brisset (artist, SAFI, Marseille), Alexandre Field (Ecole Nationale Supérieure d’Architecture de Marseille / Bureau des guides), Darryl Haddock (environmental scientist, West Atlanta Watershed Alliance), Virginie Kippelen (photographer, Atlanta), Dalila Ladjal (artist, SAFI, Marseille), Laure Gaillard (Director of Sustainable Food Service, Métropole Aix-Marseille-Provence), Frédéric Gimmig (Ecole Nationale Supérieure d’Architecture de Marseille), Baptiste Lanaspèze (publisher, wildproject publishing, Marseille), Paul-Hervé Lavessière (urbanist, Metropolitan Trails Agency, Marseille), Geoffroy Mathieu (photographer, Marseille), Hannah Palmer (writer and urbanist, Atlanta), Carley Rickles (Martin Rickles Studio / College of Environment + Design at University of Georgia), Christina Shivers (academic, architect, musician, Georgia Institute of Technology’s School of Architecture), Andrew Todd (architect, Studio Andrew Todd), Marion Waller (urbanist, Director of Pavillon de l’Arsenal, Paris).

City/Cité – Towards Earthly Cities is presented by Villa Albertine, in partnership with the Atlanta Design Festival 2023, France-Atlanta, the College of Design at Georgia Tech, the College of Environment + Design at University of Georgia, the Franco-German Cultural Center of Atlanta (Goethe Zentrum Atlanta + Alliance française d’Atlanta), Le Bureau des Guides, the Metropolitan Trails Agency, L’Ecole Nationale d’Architecture de Marseille, Friche la Belle de Mai, Finding the Flint and the Atlanta Creek League.    

Made possible with the support of the Judy and Peter Blum Kovler Foundation, the Institut français, Georgia Institute of Technology, the Ministry for Europe and Foreign Affairs (France), Métropole Aix-Marseille-Provence, the Ministry for Culture (France), Air France, Gene Kansas and Hyatt Centric Buckhead Atlanta.