Exchanges between Chicago and Paris focus on urban planning, architecture and urban cultures on the periphery. Chicago, known for its iconic architecture and innovative urban planning, shares similarities with Paris, which is also renowned for its architectural heritage.
At the heart of this exchange is the “Clichycago” initiative, a groundbreaking project that bridges the geographical and cultural divide between the Parisian suburb of Clichy-sous-Bois and the southern and western neighborhoods of Chicago. By examining the challenges faced by these suburban communities, the project seeks to uncover shared experiences and innovative solutions that can be applied across continents. Through artistic residencies, collaborative research, immersive cultural exchanges, and community engagement initiatives, “Clichycago” aims to foster a deeper understanding of the complex dynamics at play within urban peripheries.
As a recurrent beacon of architectural innovation and cultural exchange, the Chicago Architecture Biennial (CAB) further amplifies the Franco-American partnership, offering a platform for French city makers to be showcased on a global stage. Through exhibitions, workshops, and symposiums, the Biennial serves as a vibrant hub for creative dialogue, reaffirming France’s enduring legacy in the urban development.
Together, these initiatives exemplify the transformative power of international cooperation in shaping the urban landscapes of tomorrow. By forging connections, sharing knowledge, and embracing diversity, Chicago and Paris pave the way for a more inclusive and resilient urban future, where cities serve as vibrant centers of creativity, innovation, and community engagement.
During her residency, Chayma Drira conducted a series of audio interviews, each one taking the form of a twenty-minute podcast, where she met with social actors fighting against the destruction of the places where they lived. These stories help us understand the changes that Chicago is currently undergoing, while also serving as tools for residents, who are fighting against the destruction of their housing estates in France as part of urban renewal projects.
During her residency, Jennifer Buyck explored the environmental history of Chicago to discover the Windy City’s relation to its land, seeking to draw fresh attention to the biological world and the urban world.
Hamid Ben Mahi & Christophe Hutin
Chicago, May-June 2023 Learn more Choreographer & Architect
In 2021, the 17th edition of the Venice International Architecture Biennale was titled How will we live together? Architect Christophe Hutin, curator of the French Pavilion, invited choreographer Hamid Ben Mahi to collaborate around the topic of “communities at work” for Hutin’s exhibition. This collaboration consisted of a piece for three dancers, made of movements, rebounds, and responses to the images presented in the French Pavilion. The piece created in Venice became the starting point of a more ambitious project called I-3, exploring architecture and the communities under the prism of the movement.
To develop I-3, Hutin and Ben Mahi have developed a project mixing dance and video capture. Through different habitats or environments, or locations in Bordeaux, Tremblay-en-France, Hanoi, Soweto, the film tells how the inhabitants transform and improve the architecture. Its scenography based on the moving image shows the movement in architecture, proposing a response to Bruno Latour’s article “Can buildings fly?” Architecture is a social fact. More than ever, it must allow us, as individuals, to project ourselves in places of the common so that we can live together again. This piece integrating dance, performance, video images and architecture, will shed necessary light on the expression of individuals in a common place.
During their residency, Frédéric Chartier & Pascale Dalix reflected on more rational, more diverse ways to rehabilitate high-rise districts using collective/coordinated actions. This research project was a chance for them to explore the state of play within American architecture. Can the lessons it offers help enhance our approach to high-rise district rehabilitation, both in France and across the European continent? Lastly, if such rehabilitations can indeed be conducted collectively, what importance might natural landscapes and the living world hold for redesigned skyscrapers?
Feda Wardak
Chicago, September-October 2023 Learn more Architect
For his residency at Villa Albertine Chicago, Feda Wardak delved into the urban history of a hydraulic element—whether this be a watershed and turned it into a narrative, pursuant to a goal of revealing a certain malfunction within the city of Chicago and sparking a debate around it.
During their residency, Collectif GRAU examined 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.
Their project was called “Collective America.” For one month, they 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, they 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 was produced on site in real time, during the residency.
