MARSEILLE FRANCE
france marseille
A main alley forms the backbone of the campsite. Photo: Daily Laurel/ Aurélien Dailly
Yes we camp – A sign of empowerment
Designed by Eric Pringels, Olivier Bedu, Nicolas Détrie, Julien Vever, Vincent Hannoun, William Martin, Lisa George, Aurore Rapin, et al.
When Marseille was selected as 2013 European Capital of Culture, the city started to prepare accommodation for 10 million visitors – and yet there was no provision for a single campsite. Inadmissible, found architect Olivier Bedu and graphic designer Eric Pringels, and they set out to imagine Yes We Camp, a collectively built ecological mini-city with experimental architecture that would host events and creative enterprises on a vacant harbour site in l’Estaque, the northernmost harbour district on Marseille’s shoreline, out in the boondocks far removed from the glamorous urban regeneration projects that the Cultural Capital was about to present. Indeed, Yes We Camp was ‘far removed’ from everything. The initiators founded an association, raised funds, materials and expertise, drew plans, negotiated technical support, gathered collaborators and created an urban Capital of Culture project in which everybody was an actor instead of a spectator. Its ephemeral nature made it into a local experiment for addressing global questions: How to build a
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settlement in short time, according to ecological principles, with a short life-cycle, from reused and reusable materials? How to finance it in terms of short-term efficiency? How to provide basic living necessities on a harbour site that would to have be returned in its original state? Besides, this mini-city needed to be designed and built just as any city, with its urban landscape on a given topography, private and public spaces, facilities and infrastructure. Architect Vincent Hannoun organized its metabolism based on a semi-circular structure with plots to host tents and temporary buildings around an agora, hot water for the showers supplied from black tubes on reels under the sun, waste water draining into a phyto-sanitation station installed in construction site containers, urban gardens and a composting system for organic waste. The jury valued the narrative of this project over the actual built form: Yes We Camp was a slogan observed on the tents of Plaza de la Puerta del Sol in Madrid, where the Spanish Occupy movement had run a campsite as an alternative city and
societal model. In these early years of the 21st century, landscape architects and other designers are professionals who can invite people to share spatially the experience of citizenship as a sign of empowerment removed from regular power practices. [ld] Programme Experimental campsite for Marseille 2013 European Capital of Culture Designers Eric Pringels, Olivier Bedu, Nicolas Détrie, Julien Vever, Vincent Hannoun, William Martin, Lisa George, Aurore Rapin, et al. In collaboration with Technical services of the City of Marseille Commissioned by Association Yeswecamp Area 0.65 ha Design May 2012–April 2013 Implementation 2013 Budget € 566,000
The campsite is organized around an ‘agora’. Sketch: Alice Audebert
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