Article "designing by using" by fertile

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COLLECTIF FERTILE, NANTES: DESIGNING BY USING

AUTHORS Tibo Labat, Nantes (France), Anaïs Leger, Angers (France) and Paul Smith, Paris (France)

Abstract

Since the 1980s the City of Nantes has undergone a succession of urban mutations linked to de-industrialization. While the wellknown project of “Ile de Nantes” has master planned an “eco-district” of 350ha, a large number of gaps and leftover spaces still hold great potential in the urban fabric. The collective Fertile is active in two such sites in Bas-Chantenay. The neighbourhood lies to the West of Nantes, at the symbolic point where the Brittany granite formation “le Sillon de Bretagne” terminates at the River Loire. An abandoned quarry “la Carrière Miséry” and an adjacent railway track constitute two “friches” that our collective is investigating as a research-action project. Based on a rhythm of spontaneous events, Fertile aims to bring out the potential of the sites for public use, ecologic continuities and economic alternative solutions. The intention is to bring people together to initiate and explore imaginative solutions for the use of these spaces. “Designing by using” incarnates our concept that encourages locals, artists and planners to re-invent the space by using

and living in it. Over a period of two years, Fertile has organized a long-term communal strategy, managed by volunteer networks on the sites through diverse actions: Ephemeral art and performances to draw interest, temporary structures and a mobile kitchen for events, bike information units, creating playgrounds, gardening and growing food, establishing a compost and botanical seed exchange, experimental animal city farming, revealing wildlife… in brief making the unlikely more likely. Such events and projects reveal new interests and uses for the spaces. Our action, which just gained a three years agreement to occupy the site from the City of Nantes, anticipates and influences urban planning decisions. Fertile’s posture is an “urban prefiguration” to draw an intelligent line for future urban mutations, and wishes to inspire new practices and processes to read, reclaim, and recreate urban public spaces. Designing by using.

Keywords

Collective, urban prefiguration, designing by using, friche

Un état du monde “La vie avance selon un chaos poétique offert à tous ceux qui veulent bien ne pas fermer les yeux.”

State of the World. ”Life moves ahead in poetical chaos visible to those willing to keep their eyes open.”

Gilles Clément, la Vallée, 17th April 2009.

1. FERTILE “FRICHES” IN NANTES Contact

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Tibo Labat Architect, Collectif Fertile, 6 rue de la Tour d’Auvergne, 44200, Nantes, France, 0033662882760, tibolabat@yahoo.fr Anaïs Leger Landscape architect, PhD student, Agrocampus Ouest, 2 rue Le Notre, 49045 Angers, France, 0033630001706, anais.leger@agrocampus-ouest.fr Paul Smith Landscape architect, 11 rue Lagrange, 75005, Paris, France, 0033645102854, paulmhsmith@gmail.com

Since the 1980s the City of Nantes has undergone a succession of urban mutations linked to de-industrialization.

The urban community is well known for its innovative urban solutions, its alternative mobility policies and its ambitions to develop services around artistic and cultural activities.

While the well-known project of “Ile de Nantes” has master planned an “eco-district” of 350ha, a large number of gaps and leftover spaces still hold great potential in the urban

R. Houlstan-Hasaerts, B. Tominc, M. Nikšič, B. Goličnik Marušić (Editors) Urbani izziv - publikacije, Ljubljana, May 2012

HUMAN CITIES Civil Society Reclaims Public Space T. Labat, A. Leger, P. Smith

fabric. The collective Fertile is active in two such sites in Bas-Chantenay. The neighbourhood lies to the West of Nantes, at the point where the granite formation “le Sillon de Bretagne” terminates at the River Loire. An abandoned quarry “la Carrière Miséry” and an adjacent abandoned railway track, le Caillou, constitute two “friches” that our collective is investigating as a “Designing by using” research-action project. A “friche” describes an abandoned, unused urban space often overgrown with naturally regenerating pioneer plant species with no current specified use or designated function. Friches are places in abeyance and while waiting, plants grow! These “friches” offer a potential for occupation, intention and experimentation.

In 2010 a group of landscape architects, gardeners and architects gathered on the Carrière Miséry, an abandoned quarry close to central Nantes. They met around the notion to occupy the quarry. The Collectif Fertile was created.

Composed initially of five members, the small group mobilized and experimented together. To start with, the first experimentations took place in the Carrière Miséry.

Simultaneously urban explorations, taking the form of urban walks, looked for potentials, imaginaries and abandoned spaces by taking participants on improvised urban itineraries.

The collective discovered and identified urban gaps. In 2011, the site le Caillou was occupied as a new experimentation space (e.g., Figure 1).

Fertile invests in friches, potential spaces in the city, and organizes “urban prefiguration” actions. Urban prefiguration’s objective is to activate dormant or speculative pockets in order to influence future planning decisions. Through the approach of designing by using, Fertile’s posture is of urban prefiguration that draws an intelligent line for future urban mutations and wishes to inspire new practices and processes to read, reclaim, and recreate public urban spaces. The collective militates for a better integration of the communities in the urbanisation process. For two years Fertile has organized a long-term communal strategy managed by volunteer networks on the sites… in brief making the unlikely more likely. Fertile is a group of urban design professionals who reflect upon their dual role as fabricators of cities whilst contiguously being inhabitants and users of urban spaces.

After briefly introducing the context and background in which the reflection is positioned, the article presents the methodologies used for the experimentations by the collective: The urban explorations and the “designing by using” approach. Actions are then presented. Finally the article offers a reflection upon urban occupations as an urban prefiguration tool, discusses the role of the designer / user in the creation of public space, and reflects on how civil groups can engage with the local authorities to create a dialogue with politicians in influencing the creation and use of public space.

1.1. Analysis: Urban imaginaries and sterile contemporary public spaces The question of urban planning interrogates the current economic, political and cultural models. These models are addressed by all disciplinary fields and crystallize in the production of public spaces. Cities can be understood as a framework of spaces for social interaction (Benjamin, 1983).

Historically, public spaces have been conceived as zones of social communication that allowed individual buildings to catalyse processes of social interaction (Brillembourg, Klumpner, Contento, & Sherman, 2011) through diverse forms of communication in the street, the cafes or the salons (Senett, 1992). They contain collective imagination and reflect political changes: “Public spaces are firstly the containers of collective memory and desire, and secondly they are the places for geographic and social imagination to extend new relationships and sets of possibility…” (Corner, 2006).

Figure 1: Location plan of the two sites (Source: Fertile, 2011)

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As the contemporary city continues to grow, it becomes more difficult to craft these public spaces of interaction.

The ownership of public space is narrowed. Between neutrality and dominant political models, we observe a generalized sterilisation of public spaces. It becomes necessary to encourage new processes of social design (Brillembourg et al., 2011) by discussing the traditional issues of the construction of public spaces through new ways of consultation, governance and conception (Zepf, 2004).

1.2. Diagnostic: Fertile urban interstices in the city We are entering into what has been called the “first urban century” (Steiner, 2011), with a majority of people on the planet living in city-regions for the first time in history. Facing these new urban challenges, the scales of urban intervention are changing. The notion of urban ecology is emerging. “Dynamic” and “unpredictable” are the adjectives used to describe ecological dynamics. The city is understood as a process (Desvigne, 2012).

Urban gaps, or “friches”, are the result of urban mutations that occurred during de-industrialization. They represent a “place” in the city, an urban potential that offers a rich biodiversity. Developers often covet them. When considering the sterilization of contemporary public spaces, “friches” offer places to make the unlikely more likely to happen. They are places for possibilities, through experimentation. These “scrap spaces” have potential for imagination and biodiversity.

Clément describes these spaces in his theory of the Third Landscape: ”The Third Landscape designates the sum of the space left over by man to landscape evolution, to nature alone. Included in this category are left behind urban or rural sites, transitional spaces, neglected land, swamps, moors, peat bogs, but also roadsides, shores, railroad embankments, etc” (Clément, 2004).

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1960) in the contemporary city, the urban garden brings a sensitive answer.

In Nantes, the site of the Carrière Miséry is a haven of biodiversity, located to the west of the centre of Nantes.

This site is the starting point of the Fertile adventure. It is by visiting and occupying this quarry that the members of the future collective gathered together. These events raise questions. Are urban interventions justified on these kinds of sites when a future urban development is planned? How do you organize experimentations that bring biodiversity and social potentials to light?

1.3. Evolution: Public spaces as arenas for political action Public spaces can be understood as spaces for political actions (Habermas, 1993). Following Jane Jacobs’s idea of the Open city as opposed to the Closed city and its capitalist urban homogeneity, Fertile encourages a spontaneous growth of the city that does not fit neatly together but allows for creation, free from regulation. In invisible derelict gaps and wasteland termed “intermediary natures” or “interstitial spaces” (Cauquelin, 2000; Jannière & Pousin, 2007), Fertile wishes to experience the “incomplete public spaces” described by Senett, that admit porosity, dissonance and conflicts (Senett, 2006). Inspired by Sieverts and his concept of the “in-between city” (Sieverts, 2000), Fertile wishes to experience urban interventions based on recycling and reclaiming economies.

In order to address these issues, civil society initiates occupation of public spaces. Fertile’s actions can serve as an example of this. The participative design process or user’s appropriation of public space create new ways of social design. This is the subject of our article. How can hands on, on site interventions work?

2. FERTILE INTENTIONS Through the concept of urban garden, Zepf promotes the landscape approach as a model for the construction of the city (Zepf, 2004). In response to a fast pace of urbanization, the urban gardener takes time into account and transforms the site. In response to the sterilization of public spaces, the urban garden creates new uses through the activities of gardening, practices, festivals, rituals and social behaviours.

In response to incessant marketing and imageability (Lynch,

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The Collectif Fertile is a group of young professionals who question contemporary urban issues. Fertile questions the link between the conception and the urban reality, specifically when designing public spaces. How can professionals design if they do not experiment on site? The collective wants to Figure 2: The explos (Source: Fertile, 2011)

manifest itself physically on site and show a presence.

Through our hands-on, on site experimentations in urban “friches”, how can we impact on policymaking and influence urban planning?

3. METHODS 3.1 Approach: Urban explorations In our eyes, the preamble to action is linked to the way a space is perceived. Fertile is interested in instigating a shift, questioning the context and mining the potentials.

As a tool of urban diagnostic, the practise of urban exploration or Explo is proposed as a collective walk, or a creative

HUMAN CITIES Civil Society Reclaims Public Space T. Labat, A. Leger, P. Smith

perambulation with no fixed itinerary (e.g., Figure 2). The idea is to explore a space and take time to encounter, discuss and question the landscape that is growing in front of our eyes. The organisation of an Explo is simple. A meeting point is given to interested people. The itinerary starts near a transport hub and develops in an improvised fashion in response to the discoveries within a set timeframe.

students… Local or global experts, everyone is there to learn and share their knowledge about the territory. But there is a specific professional focus: the Explo project brings a deeper understanding of the territory to the professionals and consequently recognition from the public. In exchange, the professionals discuss their thought processes and confront the public’s point of view as well as their own.

This practice developed in response to our unfamiliarity with the area and the desire to discover it. It provokes conversations, dialogue and exchanges between professional urban practitioners and mobilized inhabitants. The Explo project is a research dynamic, open and transversal. This is a focal centre for actors and animators, local inhabitants, politicians, farmers, urbanists, shop keepers, contractors,

Explo has been designed as a three year program: 2010 perambulation, 2011 co-writing and 2012 crossing. In 2010, six walks took place across the agglomeration of Nantes. In total, around 30 persons participated in each Explo. In 2011 we organized three Explos with other collectives in Nantes, Saint-Nazaire and Bagnolet. This allowed Fertile to develop partnerships with the local media and journalists at a radio

station, which captured sounds and voices during the Explo.

In 2012, a big perambulation is planned from Saint-Nazaire to Nantes, in a project called Constellation in conjunction with other collectives.

The idea of a walk as a catalyst between the territory and its inhabitants is not new. We refer to the Roman group Stalker1, who described its explorations of the “empty” space around Rome during a week. Walking is also an artistic approach used by a British artist Richard Long in his “art made by walking in landscapes” 2. It is in the landscape that reality presents itself for possible futures.

3.2. Spontaneity and foundations: Carrière Miséry The Carrière Miséry is an unusual place, a timeless parenthesis, hidden behind the Butte Saint Anne on the site of an old brewery (e.g., Figure 3). Formerly a quarry, the site once provided cobblestones for Nantes’s roads. It is symbolic for the city. Abandoned, the history of the quarry was gradually erased. It is an open page, isolated from the city by high granite cliffs. This micro territory is full of potential and constitutes an area of ecological interest due to the naturally regenerating vegetation growing in the place. The observation of the site, its location, reality, temporality and topography gave us the motivation to experiment with diverse intentions and reflexions: New planning time scales, mannature relationship, links between imaginaries and reality and the desire to inspire enthusiastic projects.

Fertile produced a written document to present to public actors in the urban planning process. An absence of feedback from local authorities motivated the collective to spontaneously occupy the quarry. An encounter with a solitary gardener, passionate about the site, reassured Fertile in its choice to act physically on the quarry.

Figure 3: The site La Carrière Miséry (Source: Fertile, 2011)

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During 2010, several events took place: A neighbour’s picnic gathered about 30 participants, an improvised camp sleeping on site for a weekend enabled the founder members of the collective to confront the site, its power and uses.

Simultaneously, several artistic interventions occurred: The Jardin des lignes, a sensory cliff path, a Caucasian laurel den, windmills and a piece of land art entitled Suture amongst others. In September 2011, the Ballade des ateliers de Chantenay, a local public event, took place over a weekend where all the artistic galleries of the neighbourhood opened.

HUMAN CITIES Civil Society Reclaims Public Space

The quarry became a point on the artistic itinerary. The artistic installations, a newly cleared terrain for boules and the results of the workshops were presented to more than 300 people while sheep and ducks were left to roam (e.g., Figure 4).

From this spontaneous adventure, Fertile built up progressively the methodology of an evolutive project. The collective developed an in-situ experimental approach to open up sites for the public and instigating a debate. The event La Ballade des Ateliers provided an opportunity to visit the quarry for local inhabitants, journalists, public actors… some of whom had never dared to enter the site. This event did not have the support of local officials. Following the

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Ballade des Ateliers, a contact was established with the City of Nantes. The winter allowed for a break during which the collective wrote a publication about the Carrière Miséry adventure. Regular meetings discussed a collective vision of a possible evolution and the importance of the hands-on action to modify the environment, which brought Fertile to formulate the concept of “designing by using”.

In spring, with no answer or support from local authorities and the Mairie de Nantes started to use the quarry to store construction materials for a high profile city centre urban regeneration project. Piles of sand and excavated gravel destroyed numerous art works. A fence was erected with a

locked gate. Fertile decided to move on and changed site.

3.3. Activation: Designing by using: Le Caillou Close to the Carrière, an old abandoned rail track runs parallel to the River Loire. A few hundred meters further, this old rail track cuts through a granite intrusion. Over 200 metres long, this granite block, forms a corridor taken over by spontaneous vegetation. Impenetrable, the corridor has become a dumping area. In the spring of 2011, we investigated the site. Fertile decided to call the site: Le Caillou, meaning the Stone in French. Its length, location, protected character invisible from the local area made it a potential site for Fertile. The idea of a project on le Caillou was born. Building on the experience of la Carrière, le Caillou evolved. Fertile invests into the site, experiments with diverse uses and shares good moments.

Before meeting the public authorities, it is important to feel the site.

The first meeting with the public authority provided a three years occupation agreement in le Caillou. The idea is to create a garden, linking a boulevard and a parc, le Parc des Oblattes, located in the neighbourhood above. By creating a garden, Fertile comes back to the seasons. Based on a rhythm of spontaneous events, the intention is to introduce the local inhabitants to the collective and so to initiate and explore imaginative uses of the space.

Fertile proceeds with a clearer methodology following the experience of the Carrière Miséry. The first idea is to create a tool to meet people. This tool needs to be mobile and convivial. A mobile kitchen structure, based on a bike frame, was built with the help of a social reinsertion association.

This mobile kitchen is deployed during each event forming a focus. The first action on site was to remove dumped items.

Following that, a whole month was dedicated to pruning some vegetation, while keeping the mysterious aspect and maintaining a hidden access. A little path was created through the vegetation to access the site (e.g., Figure 5).

The second action was to organize a social event during the 2011 edition of the Ballade des ateliers, the event that “launched” the Carrière in 2010. Several events were planned including theatre and projection of documentaries, a mobile kitchen as a meeting point, and hens for farming Figure 4: La Ballade des Ateliers : Event on the 26th September 2010 in La Carrière Miséry : Windmills installation, Building a structure, Sheep (Source: Fertile, 2011)

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3.4. Methodology: Designing by using to influence local public projects The objective is to lay out a form in response to envisaged uses. The uses become a design tool: Designing by using. The methodology of the collective is always linked to the in-situ act and the “hand”. After each event/action, a map of the “existing”, or a map of the “transformed”, is drawn. The idea is to produce a series of plans, to observe the spontaneous evolution according to the uses created by the users on site.

Spatial actions are created by collective consultation. They are discussed globally, but the result is never pre-established.

Fertile does not dictate the future form, but deploys perambulations and attaches actors.

4. DISCUSSION

Figure 5: Actions on the site Le Caillou (Source: Fertile, 2011)

demonstration. In syncopation with seasonal rhythms, a planting day was organised for the Sainte Catherine week end, at the end of November. The experimentation consisted of improving the soil quality polluted by the rail activity, through diverse plantations and manual treatments.

The event was better organized than at la Carrière. Fertile now has many more members than at the beginning: from 5 founders the collective now has 15 members. One or more members run projects together. Actions take place on site and reflexions happen in the office of two architect members. On site, actions are organized with local tools and materials.

This first season 2011 in le Caillou was run without public subsides. Members participate financially at a reasonable level. Collaborations with other associations make things easier. Resources, materials and energy are shared during common events. The approach of the collective matured and became clearer, a real reflexion occurred upon tools and methodology. Fertile articulates the 3 years Caillou project around a methodical frame: l’évènement aménageur. This term can be translated to English by Designing by events, an expression that explains the approach of the collective.

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4.1. Decentralisation: Spontaneous and informal initiatives VS the formal public command in planning Prefiguration actions in urbanism can change the urban planning dynamics and bring the city to re-think its public spaces in a different way. Fertile tests places with installations to reveal the site.

In France, public action designates the institutions and processes through which public choices and actions are undertaken. According to Duran, public action is “characterized by the permanent tension between the reality of the problems affecting a society and the constraints of an order which allow their action and define their legitimacy” (Duran, 1999). The public command (ie publically funded design and construction projects managed and commissioned by public authorities) makes up the vast majority of planning and construction projects in France.

The fact that public authorities are in charge of planning guarantees a certain equality in the treatment of citizens.

Everything is decided in advance in the planning system.

Different zones are mapped and fixed and then revised.

Programs are produced with clear objectives. According to Senett, “the proliferation of zoning regulations in the twentieth century is unprecedented in the history of urban design, and this proliferation of rules and bureaucratic regulations has disabled local innovation and growth, frozen the city in time” (Senett, 2006).

COLLECTIF FERTILE, NANTES. “DESIGNING BY USING”.

How did a collective like Fertile interject in the political discourse? Did Fertile succeed in influencing the planning system?

Fertile wants to take the time to think and prefigure uses. To understand the evolving and flexible social and ecological characteristic of the city across scales. Uses of public spaces correspond more to spontaneous occupations rather than to the fixed ideas of planners. Therefore, participative processes are important. The traditional planning system can mutate toward new forms of governance and Fertile‘s interventions intend to influence this evolution.

Public authorities are sometimes timid to experiments. Such initiatives do not fit into specific boxes, they are difficult to clearly identify, and specifically in terms of designating funding and public subsides. The French context is particular regarding the public command system, therefore spontaneous initiatives do not always have the political backing because they are outside the system. The administrative and bureaucratic pathways to funding can be complicated.

Since the first sensitive and spontaneous experimentation of urban occupation on the Carrière Miséry in summer 2010, the collective has grown and changed its focus to an adjacent abandoned rail track: le Caillou summer 2011. This change of site was a result of the actions of Local Authority (La Ville de Nantes) in storing building material in the quarry that prevented access. The first action on the quarry encountered a dead end probably due to a lack of organization and bad negotiations with the local authorities. But subsequent discussions with this political authority resulted in a permission to occupy and act in the adjacent site le Caillou. A meeting with the Lord Mayor assured the future of the action.

4.2. Inversion: Public spaces and unclaimed urban spaces By opposition to sterile public spaces, the collective invests its energy into leftovers and urban gaps to fertilize imaginaries. The Carrière Miséry holds a strong speculative value and is politically hot. The site Le Caillou is of less speculative value, and less visible thus interventions are more viable and easier to realize as our occupation is tolerated.

Does this mean that such initiatives are pushed towards the margins? Can they be expressed in more visible public spaces, where the dominant power is displayed?

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The urban leftover spaces conserve a memory of the marginality that is not always appreciated by the politicians, which does not correspond to the imaginaries, contemporary aesthetics and meanings imbued in their public spaces. The point is to change imaginaries. Fertile introduced new uses in the leftover spaces to change collective imagination. The collective is undertaking a mapping project of all unused spaces in Nantes, in order to encourage people to claim, perceive, appreciate, interact with and mainly notice their environment.

4.3. Implication: Renewed professional practices, alternative economies and the status of the collective Composed of architects and landscape architects, Fertile’s members are trained design professionals. They are apt to manipulate analysis and action tools and understand planning situations. Most of them come from a professional background, designing buildings or landscapes, and have the status of salaried employees or freelancers. The collective questions traditional ways of planning cities and searches for new practical approaches. The collective took the status of an association, enabling it to enter a dialogue with institutional actors. Its members meet once a week after work. Its activity is voluntary, which creates limits. All the institutional actors are really excited by supporting these initiatives but do not follow up with funding. Fertile now understands that it is important to ask more precisely for things (subsides, political support, permission for occupation) and recognise the importance to prepare a budget.

Collective’s and association’s economies question the role of public institutions. Are such initiatives condemned to survive with subsidies or can they develop to become broader practices? Could official budgets be freed up to support them?

4.4. Action research As professionals, members of Fertile turn a critical eye on their own profession and learn from fertilising experiences.

However, the hybrid posture of professional/inhabitant, designer/user is delicate. What objectives are we serving?

Fertile is a tool open to everyone. New members keep the collective moving. The structure is open and evolving. This

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openness continuously brings new ideas but also questions the base of the collective. Efficiency can be slowed down by continuously questioning our practises and intentions. A research posture is nourished through action, but research also nourishes action.

4.5. Constellation: Networks of actors Beyond sites themselves it is important to set the territory in resonance and illuminate contemporary questions regarding geologic, biologic, ecological or human matters.

Within the agglomeration of Nantes, Fertile is a part of a network of five other collectives, working in landscape architecture, arts and alternative architectures named Constellation.

Constellation is a way to link together several objects, places and consciences. Constellation proposes to create an online interactive mapping of all local initiatives exploring the notion sensitive approaches to the territory. One project is planned to link a virtual project to physical exploration: A walk between Nantes and Saint-Nazaire (both cities are located along the Loire Estuary) in July 2012 that will link diverse points, natural sites, pieces of art and events. This artistic, cultural and botanic caravan will study and explore the territory through the walk. From these perambulations will emerge a discussion of the territory, its past, its present, future and local conflicts. The format is a one-week walk and three days of debriefing on five collectives sites where the different collectives are active.

The group is a new generation of nomads in their own territory, to apprehend and reflect on its essence.

5. CONCLUSIONS The collective Fertile intends to use and activate spaces for the public, in order to create debate and renew urban planning practises. Fertile wishes to question the traditional planning system and propose a more flexible and participative process.

Initial attempts at engaging the Local Authority resulted in no definite direction or permission so Fertile decided to let events unfold spontaneously in the Quarry with no official permission to occupy the site. Events and actions drew

interest to the site from the local community and attracted artists wishing to create installations interacting with the place. This accumulated interest in the place was important when negotiating with the Ville De Nantes after they erected a fence around the quarry and started to store materials (ironically, including imported granite in this former granite quarry!) for the construction of a high profile public space in town centre. During subsequent negotiations with the Local Authority, which resulted in the permission to act in le Caillou, the collective found that it had earned its voice from having been present on the site. At the same time the production of various documents and proposals often anticipated by the French planning system assuaged the persons responsible for the area that the collective was organised, motivated and capable.

Fertile has moved from the posture of being activists acting without the support of the local political authority, to being accepted and incorporated into the ‘system’ with funding and permission now being granted. The challenge for us is to retain the initial spontaneity, openness and experimental approach.

The methodology of the collective is always linked to handson action. The idea is to observe spontaneous evolution according to the uses found by the users on site. The uses become a design tool. Uses in public spaces correspond more to spontaneous occupations rather than to fixed ideas of the planners and detached designers. The approach of fertile to ‘Design by using’ aims to introduce new uses in the leftover spaces. Changing collective imaginaries.

Prefiguration actions or designing using punctual events can influence urban planning systems and bring the city and its inhabitants to re-think its public spaces, the manner in which they are legislated, designated, designed and ultimately used.

The key to mutating this planning process in favour of a more spontaneous approach to the design of public spaces is to be present on site, to activate the site. This is through events and hands on acts of any nature from screening films on the granite walls of the Caillou, through bringing sheep and ducks to the site to entice in local residence to creating ephemeral artistic instillations. This presence legitimises and validates the design and the proposals by bringing diverse actors together to discuss how to use the space and crucially to experiment on it.

Designing by using. Seeing what might happen…

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Notes

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Senett, R. (2006). The open city, Urban age. London School of Economics and Political Science.

Acknowledgements The founders of Fertile collectif: Tibo Labat, Marie Perin, Grégoire Barraud, Matthieu Picot, Vianney Cottineau; The members of Fertile: Alice Broilliard, Catherine Lenoble, Margaux Vigne, Léa Guilloy Martos, Émilie Leonardon, Sayed Sadat, Fanny-Anaïs Leger, François Cougoule, Greg Davy, Julien Coeurdevey, Julien Viniane, Didier Sanz, Marianne Kuhn, Sabrina Lamouroux, Nico Beloeil, Paul Smith, Jérôme Sautarel, Gany, Yannick, Matthieu Guillemot, Jean Baptiste Bureau; The network around Fertile: Tica, Campo, Gribb, Ping, Scopic, atelier Flexible, Atelier Architecture Autogérée, exyzt, coloco, Brut, Ecos, A la Criée, Atelier de la Loire, Agrocampus, ENSP Versailles.

Cauquelin, A. (2000). L’invention du paysage. Paris: PUF. Clément, G. (2004). Manifeste pour le Tiers paysage: Sujet.

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