Allow me, first of all, to welcome the resumption of the “Conversations”
including the latest edition, “European Heritage?”
I would like to take this opportunity to thank Philippe Bélaval,
Director-General of Heritage, which everyone agrees to recognize
great experience, the sense of state, the sense of diplomacy, its deputy
in charge of architecture, Bertrand-Pierre Galey, but also the
Branch teams that have contributed to the organization of
these days, including Pascal Liévaux, François Muller and many others.
To keep the course of action, reflection and perspective
This is the meaning of the Conversations.
I hoped that on this occasion this event would be renewed and
associated with the image of the Directorate-General for Assets created at the outset
2010, heritage and architecture - because it is a
that makes sense today. Heritage
is not frozen, fixed from all eternity: it is in motion, it is what we
passes on to future generations and what the creators bequeath to us,
architects and urban planners of today. From this point of view, the chosen theme
“Heritage and Architecture of Sustainable Metropolises” this year
is particularly open to reflection on the
heritage taken in all its components and on the architecture in
territories characterized by their extent and heterogeneity -
territories that are the present and future of the world.
In Metropolis by Fritz Lang, in Alice in the Cities of Wenders,
in Paris, I love you by Olivier Assayas, to understand the world, the
hero – the eye of the camera - first looks at the city and signals it
You said in your work: the contemporary metropolis is
draws, tells, maps, reads, photographs, writes, and
film: living environment for more than 80% of our citizens, it is
the horizon of our daily life, the framework for expressing our practices, our
cultures – urban or not – of our sensitivities.
The city is indeed the territory par excellence of the social link, the place where
is the expression of tensions, ruptures, fragmentations. It comes down to
architects, urban planners, heritage stakeholders to think them. It
it is up to public actors to organise, transform and
promote new forms of what is known as convenience the
“living together”.
This ambitious project is that of the international consultation on the
Greater Paris, led by the Ministry of Culture and
Communication at the request of the President of the Republic. You
know, the latter has enjoyed media success and interest without
in France but also abroad.
For 9 months, 10 international multidisciplinary teams – architects,
planners, economists - 500 people worked to produce
a number of proposals and projects on Greater Paris. These results
were presented to the public in spring 2009 at the Cité de l'architecture and
heritage, but also in many cities around the world,
particularly at the Venice Architecture Biennales and, at the moment,
São Paulo. This ambitious project has enabled us to renew our
look at the big cities and the challenges of the city of the 21st
century: mobility, international attractiveness, governance, the
sustainable development, the promotion of creativity, no subject will have
been dodged.
Because the metropolitan question has become one of the central questions of the
21st century. Imagine for example - this was the meaning of the reflections of the ten
multidisciplinary teams who have worked on the future of the metropolis - that
the inhabited space is no longer thought of according to the traditional oppositions between
between the centre and the periphery. This is the whole point of the
Tour Médicis, between Clichy and Montfermeil – Claude Dilain and Xavier
Lemoine, mayors of the two communes have told you about it: show that a
cultural equipment brings people together and creates in itself
new desires, new practices and new frontiers
the idea of a cultural melting pot at the service of the Great
Paris of culture.
Imagine, now that we were watching
this space as a humanised space, a territory that agglomerates the
desires and solidarities, industrial, tertiary, agricultural resources
closer to the user, a territory that integrates the landscape as a
urban data. This is how I see and represent the
metropolis of tomorrow.
To think and govern the city is also, today, to give oneself the means
a new reading of social change and a new report
the territory, the culture of mobility, lives in journeys and stages, of
the new importance of free time. In these conditions, the question
It is the task of planners, architects and elected officials to
society together” while we are in a society of
privatization of the social link and individualization of journeys. If we do not
take care, we go towards a society of political fragmentation and
community. The challenge is to transform every city
in the respect of individuals and in the correct interpretation of the news
that are woven into the digital age. In other words, thinking and
to run the city of the 21st century is more than ever knowing its
past, its present, but also carry a vision and imagine its future. The
experiences conducted by major regional metropolises (Lille,
Bordeaux, Lyon-Saint-Etienne, Le Havre) but also in Europe and the
world - many illustrations were given to you between yesterday at
today - the maturity they have shown in the
project management, quality of achievements and new approaches
that they have brought out, confirm the mutation of political thought and
technical expertise in the town’s “factory”.
The identification, study, preservation and enhancement of heritage,
the development and implementation of the urban project, the role of the
experts, professionals and residents at every stage of the
“process of patrimonialization”, from identification to appropriation, are
specific lessons. In this regard I want to mention the
production of the Heritage Atlas, a formidable tool for dissemination
and, in the first place, local and regional authorities through
geo-referenced heritage information.
Instrument of understanding, crucible of references and source of creation,
the heritage embodies, each measure, the symbolic value of a
territory, the representation of a community by itself. It is
consisting of tangible or intangible landmarks recognized for their
representativeness. In an environment to which they are linked, these
landmarks are as many castles, churches, farms, factories, statues,
witnesses of know-how, practices, spiritual impulses, projects
aesthetic ambitions. Beyond its power
personal identification and universal recognition, heritage
weaves a network of memories. Plural and living heritage, heritage, anchored
in the past and projected into the future, lives in the present and gives it
meaning. That is why I wanted to promote a protection policy
wide and diversified to signify how much heritage is a material
and fragile. The industrial, scientific and
heritage of the 20th century, the heritage of social housing continues
to be a subject of interest for our protection policy. The
publication of the remarkable work devoted to large ensembles. The
recent campaigns in Nord-Pas-de-Calais on heritage
or at the national level on coastal lighthouses, illustrate this
concern for the preservation of our country’s recent memory.
I do not want to forget the issue of the memory trail, the
intangible heritage, these “sensitive cultures” to use the word
of Alain Corbin who shape imaginary and practical.
Protection, as you know, takes other, broader forms that
The European Union has a long history of urban development.
Thus the sectors safeguarded are intended to preserve the heritage
designed as an urban or landscape ensemble, each element of which
contributes to the development of the whole, including spaces
building, road and street furniture development. In
in other words, the ambitious landscape policy that I
today must consider these complex sets of
empty and full, the most elegant gestures of architecture but also
the wastelands, these “third landscapes” too often forgotten about which Gilles speaks
Clement.
As you know, these protective instruments are evolving in their
development and implementation to incorporate new parameters
such as the inclusion of sustainable development goals and
partnerships with local and regional authorities. The
architecture and heritage development” (AVAP), which must
replace the 450 existing MPPAPs within 5 years, must
take into account a prior environmental assessment and establish priorities
improvement as well as heritage development
architectural. This last point is absolutely essential. It reflects the link
complementarity between the inherited heritage and the heritage created here and
now.
These questions call into question current practices and
practices of architectural and heritage professionals.
The organization of these Interviews by my Ministry intends to contribute to the
necessary reflection on the governance and conduct of urban projects
in a changing social and global environment.
In other words, it is to make the choice of the chosen metropolisation
urbanization. New territorial scales, cross-expertise,
new economic models, integration of the world economy,
new technologies and new networks: these are the challenges that
these are the borders and fields of action that we have before us
My Department intends to immediately support a
heritage and urban landscape that reconciles heritage and
cultural and historical heritage and social dynamics of the
contemporary city. This is the ambition of a humanism with a face
Urban» which guides my architecture and project policy
heritage.