Olivier Jacques, récipiendaire de la prestigieuse bourse d'études Monbukagakusho (Japon)

Olivier Jacques, diplômé de l'École d'architecture (M.Arch, 2008) est récipiendaire d’une prestigieuse bourse d’étude offerte par le Gouvernement japonais qui lui permettra de réaliser un projet de recherche d’une durée initiale de 18 mois à la Tama Art University de Tokyo.

Le projet retenu est l’étude du potentiel de développement des pièces d’équipement urbain pour les ‘squares’ métropolitain. Le mobilier et les interfaces urbaines peuvent être pensés autour de l’idée d’ « activateurs urbains », utilisant la foule et à la masse autant que le potentiel sublime du déséquilibre urbain.

Programme détaillé (en anglais) :
“Urban Plazas” of modern metropolises are places of ambiguous urbanity. In fact, plazas like Time Square in New-York, Piccadilly Circus in London or Shibuya’s Hachiko Square in Tokyo concentrate all the urban energy in one sublime imbalance. The crowd gathered there is managed and filled with the maximum of metropolitan stimuli. What kind of urban devices should be created, using crowd behaviors as a catalyst to this sublime urbanity? The architecture surrounding a plaza like Shibuya Square is already used as an interface for economic optimization, rendered in the use of “urban screens”, addressing the masses and the crowd. Already some of these screens stop being thought as merely applied devices on building, but also thought as a development of the architectural surface. Most importantly, these squares offer a perfect sociological context to seek for the balance between technological prowess and human behaviors. The present research program aims to delve in the same challenges with studies on urban furniture. The equipments on the plaza ground should be used to carry the same sense of urban imbalance, using the sublime potential of heavy crowd management. And in the midst of this mass of people, what is the role of one’s individuality?