The Lost Experience

Abstract

The thesis is focused on Paris and the notion of power, prevailing in the city. It is more particularly looking at the experience of control felt within it and how it is possible to design in resistance to this particular aspect.
The graduation was developed along different methodologies and themes of interest.
The research, set at the beginning of the graduation, looked at how different monuments in Paris are using the visitor’s experience to condition its reactions and so behaviour. From it rose a reflection on the entering process and its conditioning aspect and the possibilities of resistance it could offer.
Following the research came the study of Paris on a larger scale to look at places at the corner of political interventions, and therefore control. This was done to find a ground of potential resistance to the city structure.
The place de la Bastille first appeared as a typical Parisian square, it is an important node for the city infrastructure and has at its centre a monument. However, its name and particular political and urban history revealed how it is in resistance.
The study and analysis of the place’s history and structure delivers another understanding of the place, its important features and how it serves as an exception within Paris.
Since Haussmann, Paris is characterized by uniformed public spaces. Its specificities relying on monuments and different figures of representations inherent to the French political history.
His intervention on the place the la Bastille resulted in a disconnection between the common experience of the place and the symbolic of its name.
The project itself re-uses the place’s history and physical aspect, its lost experience to reconnect the visitor to the feeling of the place; and not its representations; as a tool for resistance.