With the opportunity of re-entering the competition of designing the Parc de la Villette, we intend to provide a space for Parisians fully express their liberal spirit.
Everything starts with discussion, and our park tries to give the optimal configuration for this to happen. We propose a meeting ground with mounds where people can negotiate, debate, protest and research together, creating a flux of strong opinions on current matters. The frequency of the use of the space and the capacity of different activities would have an impact on the landscape of the park throughout time, creating various spatial conditions.
By looking at how space has been designated for communication through history, we have discovered the different formulations. Places like Speakers corner in Hyde Park have raised people like Lenin only a few feet off the ground, but made it able for him to gather a considerable crowd. The Dionysus theatre in Athens provided a stage for a single or group of speakers to lecture to a concentrated audience on gradually raised seating areas. This kind of space could accommodate think tanks and lectures. Bigger stages like the stage Obama stood on when holding his winning speech provide a performance space, making celebrations and demonstrations possible through larger, open plains. People would be able to perform.
The program is based on how one can communicate with another verbally and visually. A series of mounds that replace Schumi's follies on the grid system would create points for activities like intimate conversations, speeches, think tanks and lectures to be centred around.
We aim to optimize the spatial conditions for the conversation to take place, and believe that this condition may change as time passes. Therefore, we let the habits of the inhabitants erode the park and the placement and size of the mound will change accordingly. The mounds make the acoustic quality variable and by this create a natural designation of space: on top of a mound the voice will travel far and be heard across the field, behind it a private conversation can happen. In order to differentiate between the scales of communication, the various size of the topography will create valleys suitable for smaller gatherings. At the foot of each mound forms a fields spreading across, dividing the mounds. This will create a larger, more open space where bigger crowds can form for demonstrations or celebrations.
operative model showing mechanism that can perform the change to the park throughout time
