In 1995 Philippe Grégoire and Claire Petetin opened their agency in Paris and won the ‘L`Envers des Villes` prize with their study of a portable dwelling for new urban nomads in Berlin - the portable house is conceived as a technological extension of the person and his senses: it puts people very close to the original isotropic space of the metropolis, nowadays transformed into an infinite host of spatially scattered micre-spaces. They have continued their exploration of future urban styles of living and an experimentation with new communications technologies by coming up with temporary shelters with many variables and ephemeral functions:

Since 1996 the Time/Zone association, set up in Paris, employs new communications technologies to draw a real territory, usually in a state of crisis, closer to a virtual territory, Petitin&Grégoire experiment with the urban, architectural, and social possibilities of this linkage in order to redefine an existing territory suitable for unifying and creating new places of expression, rights and freedoms. Second Time Zone Territories propose the creation of virtual cities on line, as a new field of appropriation, for territories situated in crisis-ridden areas, and in peripheral areas which are underdeveloped, or disconnected from primary urban processes. The project has already been implemented in the wake of the Kobe earthquake, and is now being applied in the Paris Banlieu, in Courtillières. A rendering of Courtillières on line has led to mobilising and reuniting those who make up the area, with the citizens, the administrative bodies, the elected officials, the architects and the urbanists, in a united effort towards the renovation of the area. The users of this virtual city and communication platform become the protagonists and the promoters of their environment. Petetin and Grégoire employ the space of the web in areas in which direct democracy is lacking, as a means to open up new, process-based forms of communication which can assist and inform urban regeneration.

Manifest pour une architecture virtualiste
‘I am the city
the city does not superimpose itself on me
I decide my territory
I position myself in resistance to architecture which is decided upon for me`
I am the cause of urbanity
I position my architecture`


Urban Drift 2001 / Panel 02

www.biozones.com

www.secondtimezone.com