TOURISM, CLICHES AND STEREOTYPES OF THE CONTEMPORARY PARIS NEW YORK ARCHITECTURAL STUDIO. SPRING SEMESTER 11.01.

2012

ON A JOURNEY

Director: Patrick O'Connor

Professors: Antoine Santiard , Tsuyoshi Tane, Marcos Garcia Rojo

INTRODUCTION Journey: An act or instance of traveling from one place to another (trip). Traveling: 1. to go on or as if on a trip or tour; 2. to move or undergo transmission from one place to another; 3. to withstand relocation successfully; 4. to move in a given direction or path or through a given distance. 5. to move rapidly. Source: Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary; http://www.merriam-webster.com The act of traveling implies the positioning of ourselves out of our known environment. This decision produces an auto-imposed state of detachment that allows us to look from a completely different angle local idiosyncrasies. It is an act of continuous exploration and it represents a deliberate search even in the most unconscious manners. As a result, every trip is a finding; a discovery that unveils new territories for experimentation. If taken as a conscious journey to the deepness of our cultural cliches and assumptions, the trip is a tool of enormous value as it provides a certain distance for observation, critique and reformulation. However, it also demands a high dose of self-awareness (or induced looseness) in order to accept our own prejudices, isolate them and manipulate them in a fully creative way. Reasons for traveling may include tourism, vacation, research, holiday, migration, religious pilgrimages, business, fleeing, etc. As a foreigner, every traveler experiences different states when arriving to a particular location: first, a sense of estrangement or surprising familiarity based on his personal and cultural background and sensibility. Secondly, a sort of natural empathy (or antipathy) with the visited place that allows to freshly look to its particularities. Finally, once the trip reaches its end, a certain state of nostalgia that allows the traveler to bring back to his point of departure the findings of his trip. Your stay in Paris is a double-condition journey: on one hand, the search of a new orientation for your studies and education (towards architecture, vers une architecture); on the other hand, a chance to immerse yourselves into the peculiarities of the European cities, urbanism and architecture. The studio proposes you the study, understanding and exploitation of this journey as a tool for architectural research and production. These operations will allow us to question, through a series of short of assignments and a final design project, our assumptions regarding the city of Paris and to unveil new opportunities for its development.