Faire communauté : architectures ordinaires, vie quotidienne et activisme

09h30-18h30 – ENSAPVS
Salle 705
3/15, Quai Panhard et Levassor, 75013 Paris

Organized by: Carmen Popescu (ENSAPVS, CRH-LAVUE) & Clara Sandrini (ENSAPVS, CRH-LAVUE)

ARGUMENT

Les architectures ordinaires des quartiers de logements collectifs et/ ou sociaux se révèlent souvent être des lieux de dynamiques communautaires actives. Et cela malgré des environnements construits lourdement critiqués.

Comment s’explique cela ? Quelles sont les causes ? Comment se manifeste ce désir de faire communauté ? Et comment engendre-t-il, dans des situations limites, des positionnements activistes qui tentent de pallier un manque d’intérêt de la part des politiques officielles en place, voire qui s’insurge contre des prises de décisions abusives.

Ces questions sont à poser en fonction du contexte de chacun des exemples présentés/discutés dans cette JED. Géographiquement, la plupart des exemples ainsi que le cas d’études proviennent de l’ancien bloc communiste, ce qui pourrait induire l’idée d’une idiosyncrasie situationnelle et idéologique. Toutefois, les quelques exemples issus de derrière la Cortine de fer permettront d’interroger cette idiosyncrasie et regarder plutôt les points communs. Chronologiquement, les exemples présentés/ discutés appartiennent plus ou moins à la même période du modernisme post-1945, irrigués plutôt par la pensée introduite par la Team 10 : la ville n’est plus l’organigramme imaginé par les CIAM et la Charte d’Athènes/ elle est surtout un organisme vivant à la vitalité de laquelle contribuent ensemble pratiques habitantes et formes architecturales. Sinon, le point d’analyse se situe dans le présent, ce qui introduit une perspective de devenir de ces architectures ordinaires ainsi que des dynamiques communautaires.

Ordinary architectural environments, like those of (social) mass-housing neighborhoods often reveal as places of dynamic community actions.

How can one explain such a lively dynamics which seems to contradict the heavy criticism essentially associated with these architectures? What might be the causes? And what are the manifestations of this desire of making community ? How does this latter turn, in acute situations, into different forms of activism which attempt to compensate the lack of interest of the local authorities or which raise against abusive decisions taken by the authorities in place?

The study day proposes to answer these questions by exploring the contexts of each example to be discussed.

Geographically, these examples as well as the case-study belong, with one of exception, to the former communist bloc, which might indicate that they pertain to a certain situational and ideological idiosyncrasy. The study day is meant to interrogate this idiosyncrasy aiming to shed light on the possible common points in positioning/ acting in ordinary architectural environments. 

Chnronologically, the examples to be discussed in this study day reflect the principles of post-1945 modernism, being irrigating, more or less, by The Team 10 approaches. That is, the city was to be seen not as the zone-diagram imagined by the Athens Chart, but as a living organism whose vitality was enhanced both by the different ways of inhabiting and by the architectural solutions responding to these latter. The different situations to be presented  will be analyzed from the present-day vantage point, which allows to discuss the evolving of the ordinary architectural environments, as well as the emergence and development of related community dynamics.

BUTS / AIMS

• L’hypothèse de cette JED est que ces environnements ordinaires produisent de formes de politisation qui peuvent nourrir la réflexion sur la ville de demain.
• La JED pourrait être la première d’une série d’autres JED qui démultipliera les questions sur les environnements construits ordinaires.
• Réfléchir à la possibilité d’un projet de recherche et à ses formes

• This study day formulates the hypothesis that ordinary architectural environments produce forms of social and political awareness which could contribute to fuel the reflection on the future of our cities.
• The study day could be the first of a series of other events which could develop and problematize this subject.
• Take advantage of the study day in order reflect on how to develop a collective research project

PARTICIPANTS

• Irina Bancescu (Département d’Histoire, Université d’architecture et d’urbanisme « Ion Mincu », Bucarest/ Roumanie)
• Ahmed Benbernou (ENSA Paris Val-de-Seine/ CRH-LAVUE))
• Jovana Janinovic (Faculté de Tourisme et Management hôtelier, Université de Monténégro, Kotor/ Monténégro)
• Abigail Karas (Département d’Histoire, Université de Nottingham/ Grande Bretagne)
• Cveta Kirova (ENSA Paris La Villette/ CRH-LAVUE) //
• Carmen Popescu (ENSA Paris Val-de-Seine/ CRH-LAVUE) // organisatrice / organizer
• Nadya Rouizem Labied (ENSA Paris Val-de-Seine/ AHTTEP-AUSSER)
• Clara Sandrini (ENSA Paris Val-de-Seine/ CRH-LAVUE) // co-organisatrice / co-organizer
• Ioana Tudora (Département Paysage, biodiversité et horticulture ornementale, Faculté de horticulture, Université des Sciences Agronomiques et Médecine Vétérinaire, Bucarest/ Roumanie)
• Elsa Turkusic (Faculté d’architecture, Université de Sarajevo/ Bosnie-Herzegovine)
• Andrei Razvan Voinea (Faculté des Lettres, Université de Bucarest/ Roumanie)

PROGRAMME

MORNING// ORDINARY BUILT ENVIRONMENTS. Some examples

9:30 Welcome

9:45-11:15 : Panel 1

• Clara Sandrini/ Sofia: Shared outdoor spaces in Drujba 1 district

• Elša Turkušić Jurić/ Sarajevo: The architectural space as stimulus for performing common values

11:15-11:30 : Coffee

11:30-13:00 : Panel 2

• Cveta Sourtcheva-Kirov/ Stara Zagora: Working-class neighborhoods in the 1960s-1980s  – rural demographic mutations

• Abigail Karas/ Chişinău: From Reaction to Proaction: Revitalising Chişinău’s Spaces Through Activism 

AFTERNOON// Around A CASE STUDY

14:00-16:00 : FLOREASCA: How an ordinary neighborhood came to epitomize a place of built happiness/ Life and fortune of a neighborhood Bucharest

• Carmen Popescu/ Why Floreasca? A brief consideration

• Ioana Tudora/ A green neighborhood: How vegetation played a central role in imagining Floreasca

• Razvan Andrei Voinea/ Life and afterlife of Bucharest districts built in the communist period

• Irina Băncescu / A survey of Floreasca neighborhood by students: questioning the methodology for architectural research

16:00-16:15 : Coffee

16:15-17:30 : Bench check/ Methods and instruments for researching community making in ordinary environments

• Jovana Janinovic/ Mapping Activism: Developing Cross-Disciplinary Methodologies for Studying Grassroots Mobilization in Ordinary Architectural Environments

• Nadya Rouizem Labyed/ The architect’s participation

17:30-18:30 : Making the project collective

ABSTRACTS & PARTICIPANTS / short bios

Clara Sandrini

(ENSA Paris Val-de-Seine/ CRH-LAVUE/ France)

Shared outdoor spaces in Drujba 1 district

During the communist period, Bulgaria was a special case in Eastern Europe because the inhabitants owned their homes.  I argue that there is a direct connection between the ownership status and the development of (semi-) public spaces of the mass-housing districts.

I will consider the example of Drujba 1, part of the Drujba Gilorayon in Sofia, a district that has two main characteristics:  

– it was built over a long period of time, which explains the diversity of the buildings, 

– its outdoor spaces are developed by the residents. 

How were these outdoor spaces distributed? That’s what I will attempt to analyze in my talk. 

Trained as an architect, Clara Sandrini holds a PhD as well as an Accreditation to supervise researches in architecture. Her research focuses on large (mass-) housing projects in France and Europe. She is interested in the appropriation of the interior and the outdoor spaces, a theme that she explores also in the city of Fes, in Morocco.

Elša Turkušić Jurić

(Faculty of architecture, University of Sarajevo/ Bosnia-Herzegovina)

The architectural space as stimulus for performing common values

All post-socialiste neighborhoods in Sarajevo face the same social issues where the juxtaposed interests of the local government and the tenants makes the bureaucratic decision-making processes about the space even more ineffective. Certain examples of everyday spaces within these neighborhoods show that they can improve the efficiency of these processes with their architectural characteristics. Grbavica 2 neighbourhood will be taken as an example where its spatial specificities can be seen as a tool for promoting the public interest through improving the quality of residual culture.

Grbavica 2 was built from 1958 to 1962 on the former rural landscape close to the Miljacka river in the Novo Sarajevo Municipality, as the completely planned modern residential neighbourhood. This neighbourhood consists of residential pavilion units (square in shape with greenery in between) and five skyscrapers. The specificity of the Grbavica 2 can be revealed in its peaceful atmosphere, presence of open green areas and semi-public and public zones. Unfortunately, user-led transformation of the green spaces in semi-public zones are sporadic, as well as any other appearances of social integration and activity.

The paper will refer to the analysis of examples of local activism by young people and tenants, and ways of repurposing the existing spaces. While, a main focus will be on an evaluation of the “eyes of the neighborhood” method, which was developed within the “Regeneration of 20^th century neighborhoods” master course at the Faculty of Architecture University of Sarajevo, as a tool for the activation of pavilion/semi-public zones within the Grbavica 2. The method is based on Ralph Erskine’s principles of creating humane architecture and was applied by student Mirela Smajlović.

Elša Turkušić Jurić was educated at the Faculty of Architecture University of Sarajevo and at the Escola Tecnica Superior d`Arquitectura de Barcelona. She works as an Associate professor at the University of Sarajevo- Faculty of Architecture. Her work is focused on topics that are relevant to a housing in the context of cultural and social tendencies. Since 2019, she is a President of the National Committee of International Council of Monuments and Sites (ICOMOS) in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Also, she is a member of the ICOMOS International Committee on 20th Century Heritage (ISC20C) and an independent expert of the Mies van der Rohe Award EU for Architecture. Elša has continuously researched and published on dialogue between modern society and architectural issues of cultural sustainability. She currently participates in the international project “New Town/New Narratives” improving her knowledge to develop new ideas, solutions and practices within WWII-post cities.

Cveta Sourtcheva-Kirov

(ENSA Paris La Villette/ CRH-LAVUE/ France)

Stara Zagora: Working-class neighborhoods in the 1960s-1980s  – rural demographic mutations

If the appropriation of urban space by its inhabitants is a common topic today, that was not the case in Bulgaria, under the communist regime. This paper will look at how the inhabitants of the neighborhoods built in the city of Stara Zagora, during the 1960s-1980s aimed to create a connection with the surrounding spaces of their blocks of flats. This connection represented not only a means for them to recreate the familiar context of the country side that they just left, but also a source of subsistence. Indeed, the politics promoted by the government of the People’s Republic of Bulgaria was heavily leaning on the industrialization of the country, thus turning its back to a “rural way of life”, which corresponded less with the scope of an all-over planification and centralization.

I will explore the response of the inhabitants of mass-housing neighborhoods vis-à-vis this political vision and question how the then appropriation of the (semi-)public space resonates with the today’s expectations. Could this possibly constitute an urban and architectural model in terms of our current concern with resilience and ecological responsibility? 

Born in Stara Zagora, Cveta Sourtcheva-Kirov studied architecture at the University of Architecture, Civil Engineering and Geodesy in Sofia, completing her education in France, where she graduated from the Ecole Nationale Supérieure d’Architecture paris la Villette. Her graduation exam analyzed the transformation of the former working-class mass-housing neighborhoods from the 1960s-1980s in Bulgaria. Cveta Sourtcheva-Kirov is lecturer at ENSA Paris la Villette, where she teaches sustainable rehabilitation, circular economy and diagnostics for housing neighborhoods. She is a member of the research laboratory CRH_LAVUE and associated to the research laboratory AMP. Cveta Sourtcheva-Kirov is also an expert on the public policies for renovating mass-housing neighborhoods, for the Agence nationale de l’habitat (ANAH). Her PhD, which she is currently working on, explores the topic of the inclusive city.

Abigail Karas

(Department of History, University of Nottingham/ Great Britain)

From Reaction to Proaction: Revitalising Chişinău’s Spaces Through Activism

Recent urban development in Chişinău, Moldova, mirrors patterns in other post-Soviet cities, where aggressive privatisation and de-industrialisation have exacerbated social inequality. Processes such as administrative neglect, mass privatisation, and urban densification have led to the destruction of parks, playgrounds, and architectural heritage, coupled with the exclusion of citizens from decision-making processes. In response, a new wave of urban activism has emerged, marked by both ‘reactive’ and ‘proactive’ strategies. Reactive actions focus on opposing detrimental developments, such as illegal construction and heritage demolition (as witnessed in the city’s Occupy Guguţă movement), while ‘proactive’ efforts advocate for alternative practices like participatory budgeting and civic engagement in urban policy. In this paper, I will outline how activists have not only sought to protect but also to reclaim the city’s spaces (including parks and playgrounds) and socialist-era heritage, such as kiosks and standardised apartment blocks, repurposing them as hubs for artistic expression and civic participation. By fostering participatory urban practices and community engagement, these initiatives challenge systemic exclusions, reframe public space as a site of collaboration, and propose alternative, inclusive futures for Chişinău’s urban landscape.

Abigail Karas completed her doctoral thesis at the University of Oxford in 2022 and holds an MA in Material and Visual Culture from University College London. She is now working as a Teaching Associate in Soviet History at the University of Nottingham, and have previously taught at Liverpool John Moores University and the School of Slavonic and East European Studies at UCL. Her research looks at the interaction between urban space and local identity, but more generally she is interested in public history, local politics, material culture and the built environment, with a focus on cities. In 2022, she was awarded the Society of Historians of Eastern European, Eurasian, and Russian Art and Architecture (SHERA) Emerging Scholar Prize.

Irina Băncescu/ Carmen Popescu/ Ioana Tudora/ Andrei Răzvan Voinea

FLOREASCA: How an ordinary neighborhood came to epitomize a place of built happiness/ Life and fortune of a neighborhood Bucharest

• Established as a small low-cost housing neighborhood at the periphery of the Romanian capital in the interwar years, Floreasca was developed in the 1950s – early 1960s into a district highly appreciated by its inhabitants, that came to be seen as exemplary for its residential urbanity. Its qualities recommend it as a study case that will be discussed on four voices.

• Carmen Popescu will draw a brief portrait of the neighborhood, introducing its context and briefly presenting the successive phases of the project. Aside the architectural/ urban elements composing the neighborhood, she will insist on the everyday life during the communist period and on the sense of community developed by its inhabitants. She will parallel that with the becoming of the neighborhood after the 1989 political change, analyzing the important mutations that were triggered both by the economical transformations and the massive gentrification of the neighborhood (with all its implications).

Art and architectural historian, trained in Romania and France, Carmen Popescu (ENSA Paris Val-de-Seine/ CRH-LAVUE/ France) works on politics and ideology, that she explores in the era of modernity (in its longue durée) as well as in (what she calls) after-modernity. One of her main area of expertise is Eastern Europe, that she studies in this chronological span, being particularly interested in the mechanisms of its peripheralization. She organized and participated in an significant number of scholarly events (conferences, symposia, round-tables, etc.) and published extensively on this topic. Carmen Popescu is professor of Architectural History at the Ecole Nationale Supérieure d’Architecture Paris Val-de-Seine.

• Ioana Tudora will address the landscape and urban dimension of the neighborhood, looking at its several layers developed through the decades, both as a result of the official politics and of a sum of actions and gestures performed by the inhabitants. She will particularly insist on the structuring of the urban space, on the hierarchy between private, community and public spaces and how they represent the main resource of the neighbourhood both from the point of view of everyday life but also of a possible future urban regeneration.

Trained as an architect, Ioana Tudora (Department for Landscape, biodiversity and ornamental horticulture, Faculty of Horticulture, University of Agronomic Sciences and Veterinary Medicine, Bucarest/ Romania) holds a master degree in Urban Form (Bucharest) and in Urban Socio-anthropology (Brussels), as well as a PhD in Sociology (Brussels-Bucharest). Since 1998, she is teaching at the Landscape Architecture Department of University of Agronomic Sciences and Veterinary Medicine, Bucharest (USAMV). In 2016, she was counsellor of the State Secretary on Heritage – Ministry of Culture, being in charge of cultural landscape politics. She was also a member of National Heritage Commission for Bucharest Area (2016-2018) and currently she is a member of the Urban and Spatial Planning Technical Commission of Bucharest (since 2017). She also works as architect and landscape architect for the architectural office RPR_birou de studii contemporane. Ioana Tudora is involved in research projects and had numerous theoretical contributions concerning the vernacular urban landscape of Bucharest, being author and co-author of numerous articles. She is a member of the Romanian Landscape Architects Association (AsoP) and permanent delegate at IFLA.

• Andrei Răzvan Voinea will focus on the advantages and disadvantages of placing historical discourse at the basis of civic activism. In the past decade, various academic initiatives lead to the grouping of citizens in civic NGO’s which are constantly asking for civil and urban rights in Bucharest. Based on this experience, he argues that the historical knowledge written together with the citizens leads to a sense of common identity and to civic actions. His intervention will analyze a few of these actions and will emphasize the need to share historical knowledge about ordinary built environments with their inhabitants. 

Andrei Răzvan Voinea (Faculty of Letters, University of Bucharest/ Romania) is a historian, a graduate of the Faculty of History (2008), of master’s degree in British Cultural Studies (Faculty of Foreign Languages and Literatures, 2010), both within the University of Bucharest and the master’s degree in Central European history at the Central European University (Budapest, 2012). Doctor in the history of architecture (University of Architecture and Urbanism “Ion Mincu”, 2017), with the study dedicated to social housing policies in Bucharest. Fulbright Visiting Scholar at the University of Pittsburgh (Department of History of Art and Architecture) from 2016-2017, and postdoctoral scholar at New Europe College (2019-2020) and Institute for Research at the University of Bucharest (2021-2022), with topics dedicated to social housing reforms in post-war Bucharest. Currently, he is the president of the Studio Zona NGO, and member of the Technical Commission of Urban Planning at the Municipality of Bucharest and teaches courses on academic writing and cultural memory.

• As the coordinator of two groups of second-year architecture students on-site in Floreasca, Irina Băncescu will discuss the methodological approach: how to find the relevant questions and the adequate instruments to decipher, understand, identify, and represent the complex spatial features that have generated such urban coherence and high quality of life in this district, despite its being an ordinary mass-housing neighborhood. In their field work, the students will also map the impact of the post-2000 developments on the built and unbuilt space and, consequently, on the quality of life and the social awareness coagulated in recent years.

Irina Băncescu (Department of History, University of Architecture and Urban studies “Ion Mincu”, Bucharest/ Romania) is an architect, a graduate of the Faculty of Architecture at the University of Architecture and Urban Planning ”Ion Mincu”, Bucharest (2002), of master’s degree in building rehabilitation in 2005, alumna of the Accademia di Romania, Roma, Italia (2004-2006). In 2012 she finished her PhD with the subject “On waterfronts. Aspects of the Romanian seaside evolution in the communist period” at UAUIM. She published numerous articles and participated in various research projects with topics such as urban history, the rehabilitation of waterfronts, architecture of tourism, the communist period’s built heritage, vernacular architecture, housing in extreme poverty situations, architectural education, etc. She is an Assistant Professor at the Department of Theory & History of Architecture and Heritage Conservation, UAUIM, Bucharest since 2002, teaching courses and seminars on housing since 2016.

Jovana Janinovic

(Faculty of Tourism and Hospitality, University of Montenegro, Kotor/ Montenegro)

Mapping Activism: Developing Cross-Disciplinary Methodologies for Studying Grassroots Mobilization in Ordinary Architectural Environments

This paper explores methodological approaches to studying activism in ordinary architectural environments, particularly within modernist urban landscapes in Central and Eastern Europe, often burdened by heavy criticism and neglect. Despite their contested reputation as symbols of failed planning or social alienation, these spaces exhibit unexpected dynamism and community-making practices. The paper investigates the interplay between architectural environments, grassroots mobilization, and collective identity formation, focusing on the conditions that transform latent community dynamics into active resistance against institutional neglect or authoritarian interventions. By focusing on the methodological challenges of capturing these multi-layered processes, the study aims to provide tools for scholars to analyze the complex interplay between built environments, community practices, and grassroots activism.

Building on insights from personal fieldwork, the paper outlines a multi-faceted methodological framework combining participatory observation, discourse analysis, visual etnography and interviews as a roadmap to studying urban activist movements. In addition, the paper questions the relevance of other methodological instruments, such as  archival research, GIS and digital ethnography for capturing historical, spatial and contemporary dimensions of activism. Emphasis is placed on documenting lived experiences, uncovering community narratives, and mapping spatial practices that reimagine the purpose of these environments. By observing grassroots initiatives and their temporal progression – from subtle acts of care to overt resistance – the research traces how communities reinterpret the architectural legacies they inhabit.

The paper emphasizes the importance of blending qualitative and quantitative tools to uncover the motivations, mechanisms, and spatial practices underlying activism. It also discusses how interdisciplinary perspectives – drawing from urban studies, sociology, heritage studies, and critical geography – can be synthesized to reveal the symbolic, social, and material dimensions of activism in contested spaces. Case studies illustrate how these tools enable researchers to document shifts from latent community-building efforts to acute episodes of resistance against abusive decisions or state inaction.

Jovana Janinovic holds a PhD in architecture from the University of Valladolid and a PhD in history from the University Pavol Jozef Safarik in Kosice. She is currently teaching at the Faculty of tourism and hotel Management of the University of Montenegro in the field of heritage tourism and cultural management, while previously she conducted visiting research fellowships at the University Paris-Est, Slovak Academy of Sciences and University of Bielefeld. She published extensively in the fields of heritage tourism, urban studies and cultural geography, but her research interests also encompass architectural history, memory studies and academic integrity in higher education. She is currently leading several international projects and coordinating networks in the field of cultural heritage, tourism studies,  and post-socialist urban transformations.

Nadya Rouizem Labyed

(ENSA Paris Val-de-Seine/ AHTTEP-AUSSER/ France)

The architect’s participation

A lot of research has been carried out on the involvement of inhabitants in architectural and urban projects, demonstrating the need for know-how and multidisciplinary organization to implement a participatory approach in the design phase. However, other forms of resident participation are also possible, for example in production or project management, in which the architect would have a more important role to play. The participation of local residents on the building site, under the supervision of the architect, has been experimented since the early 20th century, especially in developing countries. This presentation begins by examining the role of the architect in the self-building process, through an example from Morocco in the late 1960s, using raw earth on the building site. We will then look at more contemporary projects using the same processes in France, to highlight the difficulties encountered by architects, and the way in which some succeed in creating a dynamic and social link by integrating residents into the worksite. This research is based on the SoHoLab program approach, a JPI and ANR research project, which was carried out between 2018 and 2021.

Nadya Rouizem Labied is an architect, and researcher at the AHTTEP and EVCAU laboratories. Currently associate lecturer at the Ecole Nationale Supérieure d’Architecture de Paris Val de Seine, she teaches architectural history and culture. Her book Réinventer la terre crue, published in 2022, is based on her doctoral research on the updating of earthen architecture in Morocco since the 1960s. Her thesis won a commendation from the Académie d’Architecture in Paris in 2021, and was selected for a Caisse des Dépôts grant for architectural research in 2019.

La séance sera également accessible par visioconférence via le canal Microsoft Tems suivant : https://vu.fr/OxIA

Dans le cadre de la formation doctorale, le séminaire est également ouvert aux inscriptions sur ADUM pour la validation d’ECTS

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