Taking stock of the River and Architecture day

The second edition of the ENSAL- IFGR meeting took place at the Maison de la Danse de Lyon on Tuesday 4 April. This day of dialogue on the architecture and urban development of land along the River Rhone once again demonstrated the interest of combining an architectural approach with disciplines such as history and archaeology.

The second edition has been widened to take in Master 1 and 2 students

In 2016, IFGR forged a partnership with the Master of Architecture Cities and Outskirts course supervised by Ludovic Ghirardi, architect EPFL and researcher. This collaboration is organised in the framework of IFGR’s academic projects , aimed at building links between the world of education and research and those of different disciplines and professional sectors. In 2016, it was the first year Master’s students who presented their projects and mock-ups to three members of IFGR’s Rivers Committee.

Organised a month earlier during the semester, this second edition was organised at a point more upstream in the students’ reflection: greater attention was given to the methodological approach, from detailed surveying to the definition of the urban project.

The students were invited to present their group project to the town of Givors, a municipality with a population of 20,000 located in Greater Lyon. The morning was dedicated to three groups of first year Master’s students while the afternoon was dedicated to five groups of second year Master’s students.

Theories and practices of urban and river space

Those left by the wayside, the scope, the nature: the first three themes of the morning fuelled the discussions on different scales of spatial design, from the conurbation to an urban block. The IFGR members of jury came from the Rivers Committee and the General Secretariat: Pascal Bourdeaux, historian; Corinne Castel, archaeologist, Bertrand Porquet, General Secretary and Marine Thomas, Project Manager. Alongside the members of the ENSAL’s teaching staff, they contributed their knowledge of river territories gained from their specialities and their participation over the last two years in the activities of Initiatives for the Future of Great Rivers.

In the afternoon the themes of the presentations given by the second year Master’s students were:

• Givors, reminiscent territories
• Givors, closed town
• Think Givors for itself, towards a systemic and fair town
• A inherited valley
• Rediscover Givors, linking district by creating diversity

Here again, the debates deepened approaches to taking greater account of the history of the territory and its urban sociology, and to widening perspectives by studying international experiments.