Open call: Le cours de l’eau, la cour et l’eau

Designed by RCR Arquitectes in 2014, La cuisine, centre d’art et de design is a place for experimentation, documentation, and unexpected encounters dedicated to food and contemporary creation. La cuisine is conceived as a laboratory with the vocation to invite visual artists, designers, graphic artists, architects, etc., to develop projects in situ.

As part of the triannual program “Reconciliation,” La cuisine, centre d’art et de design in Southern France invites local and international people to reflect collectively on architecture and its relationship with its natural and social environment.

The program proposes a reflection on productive land and rurality through explorations and experimentations around La cuisine’s environment together with philosophers, geologists, geographers, landscape architects, cultural producers, architects, graphic designers, journalists, authors, etc.

Le cours de l’eau, la cour et l’eau—the collaborative workshop:
Invited by La cuisine, ConstructLab proposes to transform the courtyard of the art and design center into a liveable public space by bringing water from the neighboring river Aveyron. Within the collaborative workshop participants will be asked, along nine productive days, to work collaboratively with ConstructLab’s teams to imagine new narratives for La cuisine. The project seeks to question our relation to water as a natural element and resource through the construction of different elements like a pool, network, water treatment and a landscape. Together, participants will playfully realize and experiment with a water-based setup to collectively practice and formulate an ideal and conscious relation to the environment. Alternating moments of co-design and co-construction with moments of brainstorming, this second chapter of the triannual program “Reconciliation” will perpetuate the links already formed, create new binds while composing a common vision of the act of building.

With:
ConstructLab, European-based collective that develops a collaborative construction practice working on both ephemeral and permanent projects. Contrary to the classical architectural process in which the architect designs and the builder builds, ConstructLab brings together in a collaborative process, the design and the construction. The construction site is no longer the place of uncertainty where design collides with reality, but the context in which the project can be enriched by the unexpected opportunities that arise on site.

Why not:
Irrigate the courtyard using the water of the river Aveyron; collect rainwater; create natural air conditioning by evaporation; give back to the river a clearer water; play; share; learn; make machines, pumps and mechanical systems; discover and share techniques sometimes forgotten; understand our infrastructures; understand a territory, our rights and duties towards the environment; imagine and build the structures; get to know and adjust to nature, and compose with it rather than dominate it.

Why apply?
To bring skills, motivation and a good mood to learn, share and practice:
–wood construction
–pipes, networks and connecting systems
–plants that heal, cure, feed or clean
–graphic design, edition, documentation
–textile, fabrics, bathing fashion
–collaborative governance, design and construction

Who can apply?
The application is open to everybody. However, all participants must commit to being present on site from July 14 to July 25. All participants are encouraged to participate to the public program and stay until July 31st.

–Workshop fee: 300 EUR to cover food and accommodation (city camping on-site)
–Extra nights until July 31: 30 EUR/person/night
–25 participants

How to apply?
You can apply until June 11, 7pm CET.

Fill in the application through the online form with a short portfolio and an expression of your skills and motivations in English or French.

More information through la-cuisine.fr, maop.fr and constructlab.net.

Stay longer and join the public program, July 27–31

With Jean-Marc Besse, Bureau d’études, Julien Choppin, Documents, Matthieu Duperrex, Katja Fischer, Jérôme Gaillardet, Jan Kampshoff, Anne Lauvie, Bronwyn Louw, Marielle Macé, MBL architectes, Alexis Pernet, Olivier Roif, Mathilde Sauzet, Sarah Vanuxem, Rosario Talevi, Camille de Toledo, and Joëlle Zask.