urban matters

Bellastock Festival – The Learning City/ La Cité apprenante

The Bellastock Festival is a multidisciplinary event organized by the Bellastock cooperative. For over 10 years, this cooperative has been committed to the ecological and social transition in architecture and urban planning. Bellastock works to “enhance the value of places and their resources by proposing alternatives to the act of building, with a more global approach to transitional urbanism and the reuse of building materials”¹.

The Bellastock festival has been held every year for four days, from Thursday to Sunday, in a different location since 2006. The festival welcomes students, artists and architects from all horizons to question contemporary issues in architecture and urban planning in order to build a more sustainable and resource- friendly city, using new practices and recycled and reused materials.

We will focus on the 17ᵉ edition of the architecture festival organized by Bellastock. This festival was held in Évry-Courcouronnes from July 13 to 16, 2023, on the CAAPP (Centre Art Architecture Paysage Patrimoine) site. CAAPP is a place dedicated to experimentation and collective learning around architecture, landscape and heritage. It has been designed as a space where students, professionals and residents can meet to design and build together on a 1:1 scale.

As such, this is no ordinary edition, as it is the fifth to be held in the same city. It’s the third consecutive edition to be held on the same site, the first aimed at establishing itself, the second at equipping itself and the third at opening up to its territory.

“How do you open up a venue to its territory and its inhabitants? How do you make the festival and its practices accessible to all?”¹

This year’s festival was based on the notion of learning by doing, with the sharing of knowledge and know- how at its heart. The creation of a call for projects led by various collectives in the area enabled local residents to get involved through collaborative and participative workshops (creation of sensitive maps, production of collective coats of arms and a textile project telling the story of the town) with the aim of enhancing heritage, thus forging links between participants and local residents.

During the week-long construction of the ephemeral city, the festival features a rich program of artistic and cultural events. Concerts, artisan workshops, exhibitions and performances enliven the ephemeral city built by the participants, creating spaces where creativity, experimentation and conviviality come together.

A social dimension and particular attention were paid to exchanges between teams, but also with the artists who took part in the development of the ephemeral city, through the installation of their works within the city itself, exchanging and finishing their works with the participants.

“Will Menter, Sarah Favriau and Valérie Crenleux worked with bio-geosourced materials initially present on site to create works using a variety of techniques”² (sound sculptures, root structures, burnt wood).

Numerous artisan workshops were also offered (stone-cutting, reuse, load-bearing straw, timber framing and textiles) to raise awareness of these practices among as many people as possible, but also to offer workshop formats that are currently difficult to set up in schools with the means at their disposal.

The collaborative, artistic approach transformed the festival into a veritable co-creation laboratory, where residents, professionals and artists could interact and experiment together. This not only strengthened the local social fabric, but also laid the foundations for the long-term use of CAAPP as a place for sharing and creativity.
(Charline Quinterne)