Axel Fisher

Ce troisième numéro de la revue CLARA Architecture/Recherche explore les relations entre architecture et sciences humaines et sociales.Le croisement des points de vue offre l’opportunité de questionner la discipline architecturale et ses méthodes qui, comme toute discipline transversale, emprunte à d’autres sciences, diverses écoles, multiples cultures académiques et professionnelles.Le dossier Penser les rencontres entre architecture et sciences humaines est animé par plusieurs scènes de rencontre entre des chercheurs et des méthodes empruntées à la sociologie, l’histoire culturelle, la promotion immobilière, l’anthropologie, la philosophie.Dans ce numéro, CLARA s’arrête également sur les vingt ans d’ALICE – Laboratoire d’informatique pour la conception et l’image en architecture : vingt ans de recherches dédiées aux questions de représentation architecturale à travers l’outil numérique.Un dossier Archives exhume des projets non réalisés de Jacques Dupuis, à trente et un ans de sa disparition et cent un ans de sa naissance. Enfin, CLARA rend hommage à André Jacqmain en publiant un dernier entretien mené par des étudiants de la Faculté d’architecture de l’ULB.La revue annuelle du Centre des Laboratoires Associés pour la Recherche en Architecture CLARA est un outil de débat et de réflexion alimenté par la recherche en architecture autour de questions d’actualité.Dossiers thématiques, apartés et documents issus des Archives d’architecture de l’ULB inscrivent ces questions dans le temps et l’espace.

Ce quatrième numéro de la revue CLARA Architecture/Recherche questionne la pertinence, la réception et les usages d’architectures modernistes dans les pays du Sud planétaire. Dans le dossier « Modernisme(s) approprié(s) ? », une douzaine d’auteurs examinent les effets de la rencontre entre les modèles et principes du modernisme, et un contexte autre que celui dans lequel et pour lequel ils furent initialement conçus. Ce faisant, un déplacement du regard s’opère, de la perspective des concepteurs et de leurs actes démiurgiques plus ou moins contextualisés, vers celle des habitants et de leur quotidien. Dans ces utopies construites, les usages, transformations, adaptations et subversions adoptés révèlent la tension entre les ambitions émancipatrices et le caractère imposé du modernisme, mais aussi les mécanismes qui favorisent des appropriations inattendues. De Séoul à Lima, de la Mauritanie à la Mongolie, ce sont de véritables actes créatifs et signifiants qui participent d’une fabrication partagée de l’environnement bâti dans des bâtiments publics occupés, des grands ensembles, des mégastructures, des tissus urbains. Le dossier « Archives » traite du rôle d’architectes belges tels que Guillaume Serneels dans la configuration du territoire congolais, à travers ses plans pour la ville nouvelle de Mbujimayi (anciennement Bakwanga). Deux « Apartés » reviennent sur une conférence d’Eduardo Souto de Moura, architecte portugais prix Pritzker 2011, et sur un cycle de rencontres autour de la pensée de Bruno Latour organisées par un collectif de jeunes chercheurs. CLARA Architecture/Recherche, la revue annuelle du Centre des Laboratoires Associés pour la Recherche en Architecture, est un outil de débat et de réflexion alimenté par la recherche en architecture autour de questions d’actualité. Dossiers thématiques, apartés et documents issus des Archives d’architecture de l’ULB inscrivent ces questions dans le temps et l’espace.

In the face of the ever-evolving and emerging urban, environmental and socioeconomic transformations of Africa cities, a growing body of literature advocates for new attitudes towards urban planning theory and practices. Within this frame, place-based approaches are a recurring trope vested with the bivalent capacity to challenge the preconceptions of African urbanity inherited from colonial-era and Western modernist thought, and to bring out alternative knowledge grounded in the concrete reality of African cities. However, this notion has multiple and oft-diverging meanings, potentially nullifying its conceptual and operational validity. This introductory essay puts forward five place-based specifics based on an extensive literature review and against which the contributions collected in this book are tested: (1) the shifting meaning of place from a changeless physical entity to a dynamic social-cultural one, (2) the added value of including local to expert knowledge into multiple knowledge systems, (3) the collaborative or non-collaborative nature of place-based practices and the range of tools and methods for implementing them, (4) democratisation and empowerment objectives in place-based approaches, and (5) the role of institutions in establishing place-based initiatives in the long term. As a result, while reinstating the relevance of contextuality in urban planning and design for African cities, this essay calls into question some undesirable aspects of place-based approaches: the limitations of case study-based empiricism, romanticising informal and bottom-up initiatives, and justifying the historical retreat of institutionalised public action from responsibility for steering urban change.

“Town air breathes free”, so the medieval German saying went. Go figure why, then, rurality and especially the village form of settlement is on the current architectural agenda anew? After all, in the city peasants were freed from serfdom and corvées, modern workers pursued a promise of well-being and opportunities, and more than half of today’s world population lives in urban settlements. But the sharp and violent machinery of progress brings urban rationality and efficiency to supersede rural superstitions and customary habits, and to disintegrate traditional bearings and social structures. Overwhelmed by the anonymity of mass culture, urbanites are forced to a perpetual redefinition of their individual and collective identity. The modern Western city, bowel and brain of world economy, feeds on the tensions between two apparently opposed destinies: emancipation and uprooting. Paradoxically, the city’s centralizing effort is very soon paired by a desire of conquest and escapism. The increasing urban malaise which surfaced in the early 19th century is soon compensated by the emergence of Sunday getaways, such as those immortalized by Auguste Renoir’s paintings and his son Jean’s movies after him, but also by a revaluation of nature already registered by Elisée Reclus. Hence, the primacy of rurality and the “return to the land” invoked by a number of urban utopias in the 19th and 20th century represent the epiphenomenon of an blatant social demand for landscape and for a sense of grounding, but also alternative models to metropolitanism. Read through this lens, the experience of Zionist agricultural colonization conducted between 19th and 20th century opens to many general and timely issues – not to minimize its peculiarities nor its past and present dramatic consequences. To be sure, the “return to the land and to agriculture” advocated by the Zionist self-emancipation project addresses a paradigm of uprooted man: the luftmensch or wandering Jew. In agricultural colonization, as a device of physical and moral reconstruction of individual and collective identities, the agricultural village is the privileged topos for the reconquest of a productive role within society, for the adoption of a daily life paced by natural cycles, for the building of a physical and sense-bearing landscape.From the agricultural colleges promoted by European philanthropy to the invention of the kibbutz and moshav, the array of modern Jewish village prototypes in Palestine is impressive. Such experiments have one dominant issue of general significance: how can the authenticity and the sense of community of the rural village compete with the boasting attractiveness of urban life? In the early 1920s, the Zionist village emerged as form of modern and progressive settlement, radically alternative to the modern Western city. Reviewing key experiments in Zionist rural urbanism, some recurrent architectural design issues can be highlighted, in the face of the many original solutions proposed. From this perspective, this paper argues that, in parallel to the present hegemony of the urban in architectural and urban design, rurality and the agricultural village are relevant playgrounds for design in relation to some of today’s societal challenges.

Présentation d’un projet de transformation de la gare de triage ferroviaire "Farini" à Milan, réalisé dans le cadre du workshop "Milano. Scali Ferroviari e Trasformazioni Urbane" tenu à la Facoltà di Architettura Civile - Politenico di Milano (21 septembre - 9 octobre 2009), traitant des possibilités de réaffectation de l’ensemble des gares de triage ferroviaires de la ville suite à la révision du système ferroviaire prévu par l’Accord de Programme entre Commune de Milan, Région Lombarde, et Gruppo Ferrovie dello Stato.

This book provides readers with a wide overview of place-based planning and design experiments addressing such powerful transformations in the African built environment. This continent is currently undergoing fast paced urban, institutional and environmental changes, which have stimulated an increasing interest for alternative architectural solutions, urban designs and comprehensive planning experiments.
The international and balanced array of the collected contributions explore emerging research concepts for understanding urban and peri-urban processes in Africa, discuss bottom-up planning and design practices, and present inspirational and innovative co-design methods and participatory tools for steering such change through public spaces, sustainable services and infrastructures.
The book is intended for students, researchers, decision-makers and practitioners engaged in planning and design for the built environment in Africa and the Global South at large.

La caduta dell’Impero ottomano e l’instaurare del mandato britannico per la Palestina (1917-1948) rappresentano un momento di svolta per il progetto di auto-emancipazione sionista. Nell’arco di tre decenni, la colonizzazione ebraica della Palestina pone le basi demografiche, economiche, istituzionali, territoriali e culturali per la creazione dello Stato israeliano (1948). In questo quadro, l’architettura e l’urbanistica degli insediamenti ebraici contribuiscono alla ridefinizione dell’assetto funzionale e simbolico del paese. Significativamente, l’immaginario urbano sionista non si prefigge tanto la resurrezione di un passato mitico o idealizzato quanto l’avveramento di visioni utopiche di dirompente modernità, in aperto contrasto con le forme delle città e dei villaggi arabo-palestinesi. Il caso del Piano di sviluppo regionale della baia di Haifa preparato dall’architetto Richard Kauffmann (1887-1958) è emblematico. Attraverso l’interpretazione e l’esaltazione della caratteri geografici del luogo, Kauffmann concorre a radicare gli ideali sionisti nella realtà del paesaggio palestinese, introducendo elementi critici per la comprensione del processo di formazione di questa nazione, e sollevando questioni di progettazione urbana di grande attualità.

La Conférence permanente du Développement territorial (CPDT) s’est vue confier l’établissement du Diagnostic territorial de la Wallonie. Les auteurs y ont contribué à la partie portant sur la thématique sectorielle «Patrimoine bâti»; ils y exploraient les effets concrets des récentes évolutions de la thématique sur le terrain et les liens établis entre patrimoine et aménagement du territoire à l’échelle régionale. Cet article présente les principaux constats posés concernant les outils existants et les thèmes dominants le débat actuel, afin de proposer un questionnement sur les outils et méthodes existants d’une part, et les options politiques de l’autre.

Rurality appears as an emerging frame of reference in European discourses around the built environment, upsetting the longstanding lack of interest for rural areas of both the design disciplines and their histories. While some modernist architecture has sought, throughout its development, to find inspiration in vernacular and rural architecture, as a presumed source of authenticity and rationality, it was in the cities that this movement identified its preferred field of operations. Similarly goes with the development of modernist urban planning and design, where the importation of countryside’s environmental and social qualities to the urban sphere was meant to reform and cure the ill-perceived large industrial cities. This session deals with an overlooked topic in architectural history – modernist design and planning in and for the countryside –, addressing the relation between experiments in designing the physical environment and rurality at large. Examining the works of prominent o r lesser-known modern ist heroes, as much as those of obscure engineers active at the European periphery, it unveils unnoticed episodes in architectural history, spanning across key moments the modern era, disciplinary approaches, and scales. In doing so, this session offers an outline of different modernist attitudes towards rurality. Among the transversal issues raised across the session, one finds: 1) Alternately progressive and reactionary ontologies of the rural and nature: from more romantic, individualistic and subjective attempts to reconcile humans and nature, to the invocation of the rural’s alleged moralising influence on individuals or collectivities; from escapist to merely functional uses of the countryside; 2) Uneven architectural boldness, oscillating between the imitation of the allegedly authentic vernacular,efforts to root emerging modernist styles in tradition, and the introduction of radically new architectural languages in the countryside, whether or not in connection with quests for national identity or even with totalitarian rhetorics; 3) An inclination towards the dissolution of architectural design in favor of growing concerns for village design, regional planning, landscape, and even social planning and engineering; 4) The autonomy or adherence of design stances to the underlying agrarian systems. The extremely diversified range of the discussed case studies, while suggesting an expansion of architectural history’s boundaries, sparks a potentially promising debate around the most appropriate conceptual frameworks and methodologies to approach the entanglements modernism and rurality. *** Speakers: 1° Espen Johnsen, University of Oslo: To Subordinate, Unite or Confront Architecture with Nature? Knut Knutsen’s Regionalist Strategies and Their Impact 2° Sarah M. Schlachetzki, University of Bern: “Architecture, in the Sense of Prewar Times, is Dying.” –– Ernst May’s Housing Schemes in Weimar’s Rural East 3° Sabrina Puddu, University of Hertfordshire / Leeds Beckett University: Agrarian Penal Colonies and the Project of Modern Rurality in Italy 4° Kristof Fatsar, Writtle University College: “Only Human Tirelessness Built on Science Can Conquer the Desert”: Planned Agricultural Communities in Early 19th Century Hungary

In mid-1920s British Mandate Palestine, the German-born Jewish architect and planner, Richard Kauffmann (1887-1958), prepared a town planning scheme for Afula and a ‘preliminary regional development scheme for the Haifa Bay’. The topical relevance of these two experiments stands in the original relations they attempted to establish with the physical environment and the ‘geographic stage’ at a national scale. The chosen location for the foundation of the new town of Afula as an ‘intermediate agro-city’ was the barycentre of the Jezreel Valley, ‘cradle of the agricultural Communities’ and ‘core of the Jewish State’ (Koestler, 1946). Haifa, instead, was to be implemented into a major port city aimed to compete with Beirut on the international scene as the new ‘gateway to the East’, enhancing its local natural resources and features. Both schemes gain further consistency when considered within the wider frame of Zionist settlement strategy in British Mandate Palestine, especially along the Jezreel Valley, where Kauffmann also planned many agricultural settlements. Together, Kauffmann’s 1920s’ projects form an early pre-State regional planning scheme. If this first comprehensive expression of the Zionist Nation-Space naïvely neglected the presence of the Arab Other, it did not entail yet the later obsession of Zionist and Israeli planning with military-led territorial conquest. Instead, the dominant theme of this early Zionist vision of the future Nation’s geographical horizon was the building of a new collective identity grounded in agriculture and the reinterpretation of local geographic possibilities: the development of an ‘ancient-modern’ transcontinental route between the Mediterranean and the Middle East. Widely overshadowed by both the official dominant Israeli architectural history and by the emerging critique, this experiment could instead open up to an alternative narrative of Zionist modern architecture and planning and usefully question present-day architectural and planning practice’s ’lost of the centre’.

The creation of the first modern-era Jewish state, Birobidzhan, in early 1930s’ Soviet Union, can be considered as a curtain-raiser attempt to propose a socialist solution to the “Jewish Question” which, as a second thought, also had a part in the regime’s propagandistic maneuvers enacted to downsize the rising influence of Zionism in the country. Nevertheless, this experiment aroused a widespread enthusiasm and called for the participation of both Jews and non-Jews to this “small step in the realization of the Leninist policy on nationalities”. Among these stood Hannes Meyer (1889-1954), the Swiss-born Marxist architect and former director of Dessau’s Bauhaus (1928-1930), which – assisted by his “planning brigade” – offered its expertise to the Soviet Institute for Urban Planning (GIPROGOR) from 1930 to 1936 as chief-planner for Siberia and the Far East.Within this context, Meyer’s brigade was entrusted with the preparation of a scheme for the transformation of the small town of Tikhonkaya situated along the Trans-Siberian Railway into the new Capital of Birobidzhan. This scheme, one of Meyer’s last projects in Soviet Union, represents a step in the planer’s line of research focused on the forms and principles of the “socialist city” – the “elastic city” theory – but, unlike his previous schemes, this work also had to face an additional challenge: expressing the new Jewish national identity of the city and its role as the Soviet Jewish people’s Capital city.How did the planner achieve these goals and what place did modern planning models, the “rhetoric of rationality”, Jewish culture, vernacular architectural and urban forms, the local geographical features and landscape hold in the design and figuration process?

The concrete expression of the Zionist colonization of Palestine started in the late 19th century is generally considered to coincide with the establishment of a collective-farming settlement network. However, during the British Mandate, the Zionist settlement policy was also active in the urban realm, as in Tel Aviv, Haifa and Jerusalem. Rather than insisting on the controversial entanglements of Zionism with the physical colonization and appropriation of Arab lands, this paper proposes to discuss from a comparative perspective the role of imported models in promoting Palestine’s modernization process and establishing a nation-wide industrial network.It is interesting to note in fact that even if the urban transformations it fostered were widely inspired by imported European planning models and theories, the Zionist settlement policy did not follow a single consistent line of development. At least four different and sometimes competing visions of the built environment were pursued to promote different geo-political goals and groups of interests within the Zionist movement; the construction of a network of collective-farming settlements as part of an anti-urban ideal; the development of Tel Aviv as a ’bourgeois metropolis’; the establishment of ’working-class’ port-city in Haifa; the building of the Hebrew Univesirty in Jerusalem as a highly symbolic and representative institution.Significantly, both the first collective-farming settlement (Degania) and the first residential neighbourhood of Tel-Aviv were founded in 1909. Similarly, the same architects and planners were contemporarily involed in drawing schemes for several of the cited competing visions. Each of these strategies needs much further investigation, to clarify the part played by architecture in enacting them. Zionist planning experiences took place at a time when fast paced modernization process urged British Mandate Palestine and similar neighbouring Mediterranean cities to usher in their industrial stage of development.

7. The concrete expression of the Zionist colonization of Palestine started in the late 19th century is generally considered to coincide with the establishment of a collective-farming settlement network. However, during the British Mandate, the Zionist settlement policy was also active in the urban realm, as in Tel Aviv, Haifa and Jerusalem. Rather than insisting on the controversial entanglements of Zionism with the physical colonization and appropriation of Arab lands, this paper proposes to discuss from a comparative perspective the role of imported models in promoting Palestine’s modernization process and establishing a nation-wide industrial network. It is interesting to note in fact that even if the urban transformations it fostered were widely inspired by imported European planning models and theories, the Zionist settlement policy did not follow a single consistent line of development. At least four different and sometimes competing visions of the built environment were pursued to promote different geo-political goals and groups of interests within the Zionist movement; the construction of a network of collective-farming settlements as part of an anti-urban ideal; the development of Tel Aviv as a ’bourgeois metropolis’; the establishment of ’working-class’ port-city in Haifa; the building of the Hebrew University in Jerusalem as a highly symbolic and representative institution. Significantly, both the first collective-farming settlement (Degania) and the first residential neighbourhood of Tel-Aviv were founded in 1909. Similarly, the same architects and planners were contemporarily involved in drawing schemes for several of the cited competing visions. Each of these strategies needs much further investigation, to clarify the part played by architecture in enacting them. Zionist planning experiences took place at a time when fast paced modernization process urged British Mandate Palestine and similar neighbouring Mediterranean cities to usher in their industrial stage of development.

Il Grande Incendio di Salonicco (1917) e la sua ricostruzione contribuirono a ridisegnare la geografia etno-confessionale lungo il nuovo confine greco-turco, ma anche alla transizione della città da “Gerusalemme dei Balcani” a “Capitale dei profughi”. Pochi decenni prima dell’incendio che avrebbe colpito nel corpo la comunità ebraica europea – l’Olocausto – quello di Salonicco concorse ad alimentare fenomeni migratori e progetti di ricostruzione in luoghi distanti : calcando le orme dei loro correligionari centreuropei, gli ebrei di Salonicco emigrarono verso l’Europa occidentale, le Americhe. Alcuni preferirono la Palestina.Dalla fine dell’Ottocento, le persecuzioni razziali in Europa – spesso accompagnate dall’incendio dei luoghi di culto – avevano provocato regolari ondate migratorie verso questa remota provincia dell’Impero ottomano, ora sotto Mandato britannico. A ciascuna di queste ondate corrispondevano altrettante campagne insediative accomunate dallo sforzo di diverse generazioni di agronomi, architetti e urbanisti nella definizione dei caratteri e delle forme del villaggio agricolo ebraico ; « topos » prioritario nella ricostruzione delle nuove identità individuali e collettive ebraiche.Nei primi anni Venti, il riassetto geopolitico del Mediterraneo orientale rappresenta l’occasione per l’Organizzazione sionista di guidare il « ritorno degli ebrei alla loro terra d’origine » e all’agricoltura. Nella Valle di Jesreel si mette in atto un ambizioso progetto di ricostruzione e diradicamento, fisico e culturale a un tempo : un giovane architetto e urbanista di origini tedesche – Richard Kauffmann (1887-1958) – progetta numerosi villaggi agricoli, una piccola agro-città (Afula) e lo sviluppo della Baia di Haifa. La sequenza di questi progetti prefigura un precoce esperimento di pianificazione regionale pre-statale dal quale emerge la prima espressione compiuta di un’idea dello Spazio-Nazione sionista : un sistema insediativo lineare fondato sull’agricoltura, gerarchicamente organizzato e funzionalmente integrato, in cui è possibile apprezzare il grado di necessità del progetto di architettura nel quadro di una strategia di ampio respiro che stabilisce rapporti originali con la natura, la storia e l’« impianto geografico » a scala nazionale.

The Agro-Joint project (1924-1938), conceived and directed by the Russian-born American agronomist Joseph Rosen (1877-1949) and promoted by the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, was one of the most effective and ambitious philanthropic relief programs envisioned and implemented for the resettlement and «productivization» of Russian Jews as avant-garde farmers in Soviet Crimea and southern Ukraine.The present paper discusses, from a planner and architect’s perspectives, some of the Agro-Joint plans, projects and planning reports contained in the J. Rosen archives stored at the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research (New York).

In Israeli architectural history, both the official dominant position and the emerging critique usually trace the birth of Zionist comprehensive regional planning policy back to the 1930s and to the rise of the so-called Bauhaus-style modernist architecture and urban planning.Looking back to the early 1920s, the Jewish colonization of British Mandate Palestine experienced a major shift, turning from a sporadic and experimental phenomenon to a conscious mass strategy. The Zionist Organization and its many agencies gained a hegemonic role in driving the “Return of the Jewish people to the (Promised) Land” and to agriculture. Hence, Zionism faced for the first time the problem of establishing the forms and features of the Israeli Nation-Space.A key figure in this process was the German-born Jewish architect Richard Kauffmann (1887-1958), which planned most of the new agricultural and urban settlements promoted by the Zionist Organization in Palestine.Placing side by side each of Kauffmann’s plans, an early pre-State regional planning scheme emerges. One that envisioned the Jezreel Valley as the future “core” of the Israeli nation-state shaped as complex polycentric urban network. There, a new national identity based on social reform, agrarianism and the reinterpretation of local geographic possibilities would have developed along an “ancient-modern” transcontinental route between the Mediterranean and the Middle East.Discussing Kauffmann’s contribution to the architectural and landscape expression of this ambitious and controversial resettlement project against geopolitical, agricultural and ideological issues, an alternative narrative of Zionist modern architecture and planning might open up and present-day architectural and planning practice’s “lost of the centre” can be usefully questioned.

5. In Israeli architectural history, both the official dominant position and the emerging critique usually trace the birth of Zionist comprehensive regional planning policy back to the 1930s and to the rise of the so-called Bauhaus-style modernist architecture and urban planning. Looking back to the early 1920s, the Jewish colonization of British Mandate Palestine experienced a major shift, turning from a sporadic and experimental phenomenon to a conscious mass strategy. The Zionist Organization and its many agencies gained a hegemonic role in driving the “Return of the Jewish people to the (Promised) Land” and to agriculture. Hence, Zionism faced for the first time the problem of establishing the forms and features of the Israeli Nation-Space. A key figure in this process was the German-born Jewish architect Richard Kauffmann (1887-1958), which planned most of the new agricultural and urban settlements promoted by the Zionist Organization in Palestine. Placing side by side each of Kauffmann’s plans, an early pre-State regional planning scheme emerges. One that envisioned the Jezreel Valley as the future “core” of the Israeli nation-state shaped as complex polycentric urban network. There, a new national identity based on social reform, agrarianism and the reinterpretation of local geographic possibilities would have developed along an “ancient-modern” transcontinental route between the Mediterranean and the Middle East. Discussing Kauffmann’s contribution to the architectural and landscape expression of this ambitious and controversial resettlement project against geopolitical, agricultural and ideological issues, an alternative narrative of Zionist modern architecture and planning might open up and present-day architectural and planning practice’s “lost of the centre” can be usefully questioned.

« L’air de la ville rend libre », nous rappelle le proverbe médiéval allemand. On s’étonnera alors du regain d’intérêt de l’architecture pour le thème de la ruralité et en particulier pour le modèle d’établissement humain villageois. En ville, le paysan s’affranchit des servitudes et corvées, et le travailleur moderne poursuit une promesse de bien-être et d’opportunités. Mais, face à la machinerie sèche et violente du progrès, la rationalité et l’efficacité urbaine supplantent les superstitions et le régime des habitudes ruraux ; les repères spatiaux et les structures sociales traditionnels se délitent. Happé par l’anonymat des masses, le citoyen est contraint à une perpétuelle redéfinition de son identité individuelle et collective. La ville moderne occidentale, intestin et cerveau de l’économie-monde, s’alimente de la tension entre projet d’émancipation et projet de déracinement. Paradoxalement, son effort de centralisation s’accompagne d’un désir de conquête et d’évasion ; l’émergence du sentiment de la nature relevé par Reclus et les escapades immortalisées par les Renoir père et fils comptent parmi les compensations au malaise urbain. Ainsi, la ruralité et le « retour à la terre » invoqués par nombre d’utopies urbaines du 19è et du 20è siècle représentent l’épiphénomène d’un besoin social patent de paysagement et de modèles alternatifs au métropolitanisme. Relue à travers ce prisme, l’expérience de colonisation agricole sioniste menée entre 19è et 20è siècle – sans besoin de minimiser ses spécificités ni ses conséquences dramatiques passées et actuelles – présente plusieurs caractères de généralité et d’actualité. Le « retour à la terre et à l’agriculture » prôné par le projet d’auto-émancipation sioniste s’adresse en effet à un paradigme d’homme déraciné : le luftmensch ou juif errant. La colonisation agricole, comme mécanisme de reconstruction physique et morale d’identités individuelles et collectives concentre ses efforts sur la définition des formes et caractères du village agricole, topos privilégié à travers lequel conquérir un rôle productif au sein de la société, adopter un quotidien rythmé par les cycles naturels, s’identifier avec un paysage tout en le façonnant.Des écoles d’agriculture de la philanthropie européenne jusqu’à la mise au point des types consacrés – kibboutz et mochav – le panel des prototypes de village moderne juif en Palestine est impressionnant, et révèle un thème dominant : comment combiner l’authenticité du contact à la terre et du sens de communauté villageoise à l’effervescence culturelle et intellectuelle de la ville ? Au début des années 1920, le village sioniste se présente déjà comme un modèle d’établissement humain moderne et progressiste, en radicale alternative à celui de la ville moderne occidentale. En présentant quelques uns de ces villages, il est possible d’identifier des problèmes d’architecture et de composition récurrents dans le projet d’un village agricole, ainsi que de dégager les solutions originales qui y ont été tour à tour proposées. Depuis cette perspective, il est possible de concevoir l’actualité de la ruralité et du village agricole comme territoire de projet, et de discuter de la pertinence d’expériences passées et parfois même lointaines pour affronter certains des défis actuels.

The “return to the land” and the formation of a Jewish peasantry represented the main lines and the noblest ambitions of early Zionist ideology. Hence, the Jewish village was considered as the cornerstone of the future Jewish nation. However, the moshav (co-operative village) and the kibbutz (collectivist village) models’ prominent role in the building of Israeli statehood throughout the 20th century widely overshadowed the available alternatives. In fact, the extent and range of Zionist rural utopianism is impressive. The outbreak of WWI put a damper on the Jewish colonization of Ottoman Palestine, but opened up to unforeseen possibilities in the Entente Powers’ influence could be extended to the area. This transition period – which ended with the first post-war Zionist annual conference (London, 1920), the 12th Zionist Congress (Carlsbad, 1921), and the establishment of the British civil administration in Palestine (1921) – offered the opportunity for Zionist agronomists, experts, planners, architects and pioneers to engage in a battle of ideas addressing central issues of colonization. Which kind of agriculture should be practiced, for which kind of market? How could the available “human material” be involved, and which forms of social structures should be favored? Which settlement patterns should be adopted, for which kind of city-countryside relationships, and how could architectural expression support the construction of a peculiar Zionist rural landscape? These and more issues were addressed at the time. This paper discusses five different solutions: the ideal scheme for a circular agricultural colony by agronomist Jacob Oettinger, the prototype of an agricultural colony and garden-city to be founded in the Land of Israel by the Varsovian association Ma’agal (1917), the co-operative settlement model by Zionist pioneer and settler Eliezer Joffe (1919), the garden-city model by sociologist Franz Oppenheimer and architect Alexander Baerwald (1920), the siedlung model by Zionist agronomist Selig E. Soskin and German landscape architect Leberecht Migge (1920). Such proposals, focused on the establishment of smallholders’ settlements, were opposed by Solomon Kaplansky, a prominent Labour Zionism politician, and by agronomist Isaac Wilkanski (Elazari-Volcani). Both plead for different forms of collective communes which shall also be reviewed, together with the insights of two relevant international figures: North-American engineer Elwood Mead (chairman of the California State Land Settlement Board, and an influential figure in president Roosevelt’ New Deal Resettlement Administration) whose 1924-report explored the possibilities for intensive irrigated capitalistic citrus culture in Palestine; and Emilio Sereni (a young Roman Jew, later to turn into a key-figure of the Italian Communist Party), whose 1927-graduation thesis exposed his plans to establish a private farm in Palestine. Altogether, the comparison of these different proposals, placing the focus on the fundamental interrelation between different disciplinary approaches, allows to draw the mutual influences between Zionist plans and other coeval colonization schemes adopted across the Mediterranean, but also shows a timely emphasis on general issues in the planning of agricultural settlements which are gaining momentum again within the frame of present-day research for new forms of sustainable agricultural settlement in Europe and elsewhere.

In Wallonia (Belgium’s French-speaking area), the notion of small town is often used from a geographic perspective within the frame of the region’s urban hierarchy. However, very little has been said about the forms and features of Walloon small towns’ urban fabric. Usually considered as “a land of laissez-faire, where the cacophonic juxtaposition of designs delivers surprise after surprise, where an intense poetry lurks side by side with a nauseating banality behind the commonplace of everyday habitation ”, the Belgian urban landscape has fostered very little urban history and almost no literature about its physical form.Within the frame of a research study funded by the Walloon regional government, aiming to establish guidelines for a compact-city policy, four small towns have been selected as case studies for an urban form study. Which growth dynamics, urban forms and urban issues can be singled out in Walloon small towns ?This paper outlines a number of distinctive physical patterns of Walloon small towns, and questions the use of this category through urban planning and design theory in Belgium across the century. As a result, it claims that the small town category is not only relevant to urban history, but is topical to contemporary urban design as well, in the face of the dominant concern for metropolitan and suburban contexts.

Throughout the 20th century, many countries witnessed the implementation of large-scale agricultural development and colonization policies (ADCP). Inspired by agrarian ideologies as well as by different forms of social and political utopias, these involved major land reforms aimed primarily at modernizing the agricultural sector. Their translation into practice was carried on by agricultural development and colonization schemes (ADCS). ADCS combined large-scale land reclamation with major (re)settlement of ‘problematic’ groups (hired labourers, ethnic minorities, war veterans, refugees, dissidents, etc.) often in un- or under-populated areas within or on the fringes of the concerned countries. ADCS were implemented in different political contexts and continued even after radical political changes. In addition to their sector-specific goals, ADCP aimed at fostering economic growth by supplying national markets, solving the critical socio-economic situation of their target groups, as well as fostering new identities through of spatial, artistic and cultural frameworks. Hence, ADCS strongly contributed to the construction of national identities and cultures – shaping behaviours, values, language, education, the fine and applied arts, etc. –, but were also central to state-building processes – establishing norms, institutions, and scientific agendas. Therefore, ADCS differ from both ancient and modern colonisations for being mostly endogenously directed towards sovereign areas (or eventually contested border zones) to consolidate cohesive national territories. ADCP were first theorized in the 19th century to serve emerging empires and nation-states (Roscher, 1856), or to remedy the effects of industrialization (Owen, 1841; Huber, 1848; Oppenheimer, 1896). Large scale ADCS were attempted in Europe from the late 19th century (Caballero, 1864; de Oliveira Martins, 1887), with major experiments conducted within the frame of post- WWI and WII reconstructions. ADCP were then adopted in former colonies after independence (Déry, 2014), inspiring much development aid and land reform policies exported to the developing world (Lipton, 2009). The modern concepts of planning and calculation were central to ADCP; they were a testing ground for experts in new scientific disciplines dealing with improved agriculture and the shaping of the built environment, where new ideas and techniques were confronted. Their implementation invoked different pasts by modernist landscape/architects, designers, planners, and artists, which invented new forms of rural life to compete with the modern industrial city’s increasing attractiveness. As a result, the implementation of ADCS produced unprecedented modernist rural landscapes (MRL) in number of countries and regions, which today present tangible evidence of recent European history as well as an emerging cultural heritage. This paper presents a recently started postdoctoral research project, focused on the case of the Fascist Pontine Marches, the Francoist Ebro Valley, and the Zionist Jezreel Valley. It poses some elements for a genealogy of the ADCP, the theoretical planning background for ADCS, the features of MRL, and questions the possibility and tools to compare such cases. It discusses their heritage value, both in physical and ideal terms. Finally, it questions their present-day challenges, asking whether or not they should be considered as generic rural landscapes?

Throughout the 20th century, many modernist architects have sought inspiration in vernacular architecture, in an attempt to address the tensions between the local and international dimensions of their activity within a world undergoing rapid change, yet still largely bound to tradition. However, never as much as in the large-scale campaigns conducted throughout Europe and beyond to reshape entire rural landscapes, were such tensions more evident, and more challenging to architectural history. Episodes in recent history, such as the reclamation of the Pontine Marshes under Mussolini, the Zionist colonization of Palestine under British Mandate, the Italian colonization of Fascist Libya, or the agricultural recolonization of inner Spain under the Francoist regime, all entailed the construction of new villages and towns, including residential buildings, but also "technical" buildings (farms, barns, silos, etc.) as well as "communal" buildings (for religious, political, educational, and recreational purposes). Some of these buildings were designed by architects, faced with the challenging opportunity to experiment with modernist architectural style to produce, at least apparently, a “truly authentic” modern vernacular. And other buildings remained “anonymous” productions, although they helda non-less important role in the modernization policies they embodied. Mainstream architectural history has dedicated little, if any, attention to large-scale modernist architectural production in the countryside, mostly focusing on the trajectory of single architects or single experiments, leaving us unprepared to face a number of epistemic and methodological challenges: should polite "modernist" architecture inspired or mimicking vernacular architecture be approached as an “authorial” product or rather as vernacular artefacts themselves? Fed by an ongoing EU-funded research project (“MODSCAPES: reinventions of modernist rural landscapes”, 2016-2019), this paper proposes to track the entangled relationships between the polite and the vernacular in the above mentioned case studies, focusing on the advancements brought to the debate by a seldom attempted comparative approach to the topic.

Most of the time, Modernism – as the cultural and artistic expression of core modern values – is associated with urban and industrial contexts, in stark contrast to a “backward countryside”. Just as the export of Western modernisms to the colonies and developing countries gave rise to the “other” (or “hybrid”) modernism, the adoption of modernism in the countryside caused modern values to blur. Focusing on “modernist reinventions of the rural landscape”, the MODSCAPES project (funded under by the HERA JRP III call dedicated to the “Uses of the Past”, Oct. 2016-2019) specifically questions these preconceived ideas. During the 20th century, large-scale agricultural development schemes reshaped the countryside throughout Europe and beyond. They were conceived in different political and ideological contexts – from the Fascist reclamation of the Pontine Marshes to Zionist agricultural colonisation, from hydraulic works and refugee settlement in 1920s Greece to Soviet forced collectivisation of the Baltic-States countryside – combining major land reclamation works with the (re)settlement of problematic groups. Aimed at modernizing the countryside, these were pivotal experiments in nation-building policies, a testing ground for the ideas, and tools, of environmental and social scientists, architects and engineers, planners and landscape architects, as well as artists, who converged around the common challenge. The present roundtable proposal invites participants involved in MODSCAPES to deliver short position statements on the following points: 1) How did rural environments entail typical modernist themes such as speed, technology, scientific progress, human control of nature, etc.? Which specific themes emerged from the encounter with the imagination and materiality ofthe rural? How far did such ideas of progress became subservient to authoritarian ideologies? 2) While hovering between the past, alleged vernacular authenticity, and idealised visions of a possible future, what did “past” and “future” actually mean in each different context? 3) Some modernist rural landscapes include bold architectural experiments, some instead are characterised by innovative landscape features, others deserve our attention for their cultural impact (on literature, folk music, etc.). Which key agents contributed in shaping a new “place identity”? 4) What is the present legacy of modernist rural landscapes? Is this mainly consisting of the built environment, or rather is it a form of “intangible heritage”? 5) Bearing in mind the current refugee crisis, can modernist rural landscapes be a precedent to envisage new ways to combine welfare, planning and re(settlement) policies, or more sustainable settlement patterns? Roundtable chairs: Dr. Cristina Pallini, MODSCAPES Principal Investigator, Politecnico di Milano; Dr. Axel Fisher, FNRS postdoctoral researcher, Université libre de Bruxelles. Roundtable participants: ** Helena Maia & Paolo Marcolin: Some notes on the Iberian experience ** Silvia Boca: Architecture to reshape the Italian modernist countryside: Pontine Marshes and Apulia Tableland ** Michele Tenzon: A “Moroccan laboratory”: French colonial policies and the emergence of Modernist rural landscapes in the Rabat region ** Christoph Muth: From villages to little metropolis: the modernisation of the rural economy and lifestyle in the GDR. The example of the south Oderbruch (Brandenburg)

En matière de pédagogie universitaire, deux thématiques pourtant bien établies semblent ne pas s’être encore rencontrées : les défis de l’enseignement dit « en grand auditoire » (Gibbs & Jenkins, 1992 ; Brauer, 2011 ; Daele & Sylvestre, 2013 ; Rege Colet & Berthiaume, 2015) et la centralité du dispositif de l’atelier de projet dans l’enseignement des disciplines de conception de l’espace habité (architecture, architecture du paysage, urbanisme : Dutton, 1984 ; Wang, 2010 ; Clayes & Raucent, 2014). Les institutions dispensant des formations dans ces disciplines et dont le nombre d’étudiants justifie ce type de questionnement sont rares en Europe ; elles en font plutôt une préoccupation financière aussitôt évacuée en adaptant le ratio enseignants/étudiants dans l’ « atelier » (Spiridonidis & Voyatzaki, 2012). Ainsi, dans ces champs disciplinaires, le problème de l’« enseignement pour le plus grand nombre » ne fait pas encore l’objet d’une sérieuse réflexion pédagogique.***Notre contexte est celui de la Faculté d’architecture La Cambre-Horta qui accueille une population de plus de 1200 étudiants en architecture et 150 étudiants en architecture du paysage, alimentée par des contingents de 300 à 400 nouveaux étudiants chaque année. Dans ces formations, « l’atelier de projet » occupe une place centrale – un tiers de la charge horaire et une seule occasion d’évaluation par semestre –, alimentant de fait une compétition directe avec les cours dits « théoriques ». Par ailleurs, les étudiants possèdent des niveaux de compétence fort inégaux. Ainsi, près de 60% des étudiants présentent de sérieuses difficultés de compréhension à la lecture. La simple mise en œuvre des dernières innovations en matière de pédagogie universitaire « en grand auditoire » (Haddad, 2006) se révèle donc doublement inopérante.***Notre communication propose un retour d’expérience à propos d’un dispositif participatif et collaboratif visant à internaliser la résolution de ces tensions structurelles, en favorisant l’implication et l’engagement des 280 étudiants inscrits à un cours de « théorie du paysage » du cycle de bachelier, auxquels l’entièreté des contenus du cours a été confiée. Dans ce contexte, cette contribution se structure en deux temps pour analyser deux des états du dispositif (Paquelin, 2004) : le dispositif prescrit – tel qu’il a été conçu par l’enseignant et porteur d’une prescription ou intention d’usage – et le dispositif vécu – ou réel, actualisation effective du dispositif prescrit, ce qui est réellement utilisé par les apprenants. Pour ce dernier, nous avons analysé les pratiques d’apprentissage des étudiants dans une approche sociocognitive (Bandura, 1986, 2003). Plus précisément, nous avons étudié les liens entre les caractéristiques personnelles des étudiants – le profil sociodémographique –, leur perception du dispositif pédagogique ainsi que leur engagement comportemental, cognitif et affectif au sein de celui-ci. ***Pour ce faire, nous avons, dans un premier temps, décrit le contexte initial, la problématique ainsi que le dispositif mis en œuvre et ses différentes composantes par l’intermédiaire d’un entretien d’explicitation mené auprès de l’enseignant. Dans un second temps, par le biais de questionnaires adressés aux étudiants (n=76), nous avons étudié les différentes dimensions susmentionnées de leurs pratiques d’apprentissage. Sur cette base, nous saisissons le sens que l’enseignant et les étudiants accordent à ce dispositif, la manière dont ils s’y engagent et infléchissent certaines de ses modalités afin qu’il réponde de manière optimale à leurs besoins en termes d’enseignement et d’apprentissage.***Le dispositif mis en œuvre par l’enseignant se fonde sur 3 « clauses contractuelles ». Tout d’abord, deux modalités de participation sont proposées : « en présentiel », impliquant la présence constante aux 12 séances hebdomadaires de cours, ou « l’exonération de présence », dispensant l’étudiant de toute présence physique aux séances de cours. Deuxièmement, à chacune de ces modalités correspond un contenu disciplinaire différent. Les étudiants participant au cours en présentiel ont chacun été invités à choisir un exemple de ce qu’ils/elles considèrent être un paysage, et à en dresser une « fiche d’identité » selon une grille d’analyse structurée (état des savoirs, « plan dicté », « enquête par le dessin », « prophétie du paysage »), autour de l’élaboration de laquelle toutes les séances ont été organisées, jusqu’au rendu lors de la dernière séance de cours. Quant aux étudiants optant pour « l’exonération de présence », ils/elles préparent de manière autonome l’étude d’une anthologie de textes sélectionnés par l’enseignant et organisés en « leçons » thématiques. Finalement, aux deux modalités de participation correspondent autant de modalités d’évaluation : une combinaison d’auto-évaluations et d’évaluation par les pairs pour la modalité « en présentiel » ; un examen écrit conventionnel pour l’« exonération de présence ».La modalité « en présentiel », objet central de l’expérimentation, outre favoriser un enseignement actif, participatif et collaboratif, vise également à véhiculer plusieurs valeurs centrales à la théorie contemporaine du paysage : la polysémie de la notion de paysage, le paysage comme bien commun, le « partage de la signature », la « subjectivité partagée ». Les étudiants concernés obtiennent ainsi leur évaluation lors de la dernière séance de cours, anticipant ainsi l’achèvement de leurs devoirs pédagogiques avant la « session d’examens » et les « jurys » d’évaluation de l’atelier tant redoutés.***Du côté des étudiants, ceux -ci ont largement opté pour la modalité en présentiel – 88% des répondants – et s’y engagent de manière importante – 87% d’entre eux étant présent à plus de 75% des séances de cours. Leur perception du dispositif – le dispositif perçu – est elle-même cohérente avec le dispositif prescrit par l’enseignant : sept des onze objectifs du cours sont évalués comme atteints par plus de 75% des étudiants, l’ensemble des objectifs étant eux-mêmes évalués comme atteints par plus de 50% des étudiants. En termes d’engagement, si les étudiants n’estiment pas apprendre davantage – en termes de quantité – que dans d’autres cours ou développer des apprentissages de meilleure qualité (57%), ils jugent les activités comme davantage personnalisées (85%), mettent en œuvre des compétences de haut niveau (84%) et apprennent à être autonomes dans leurs apprentissages (82%). Ils estiment également s’impliquer de manière plus active dans le cours (73%), être plus motivés (67%) ou encore avoir plus envie d’apprendre grâce à cette méthode pédagogique (70%). Dans ce cadre, le dispositif semble bien dosé en termes de charge de travail (91%) comme en termes de rythme de travail hebdomadaire (76%). Trois des ingrédients de la réussite du dispositif semblent la disponibilité de l’enseignant pour répondre aux questions des étudiants, ses qualités d’animation lors des séances en présentiel ainsi que la propension des étudiants à mener des activités de manière collaborative.***Cette expérimentation ouvre des pistes de solutions « internalisées » aux tensions entre l’« atelier » et les cours théoriques, et entre un suivi pédagogique personnalisé en petits groupes et l’anonymat du « grand auditoire ». Le prix d’une telle initiative se mesure en termes d’avantages incitatifs pour les étudiants (réduction du « temps de travail étudiant », augmentation du taux de réussite et des « moyennes », engagement envers les contenus disciplinaires), et de renoncements pour l’enseignant (réduction des contenus disciplinaires, atténuation des équilibres de pouvoir). Les résultats sont cependant inattendus : leur motivation et la stimulation de leur curiosité sont sans égal. Du côté de l’enseignant, le dispositif est terriblement énergivore et chronophage, et, paradoxalement, le renoncement à l’énonciation de contenus structurés, choisis, et inévitablement partiels, représente le principal grief des étudiants. Les orientations pour la mise au point du dispositif visent à réduire le « champs des possibles » parmi les cas d’études choisis par les étudiants, en les engageant dans un jeu de rôle simulant la reconstitution d’un concours de projet de paysage de pertinence théorique : peut-être le « Parc de la Villette » ?

While there has been an enduring scholarly interest for what we have named “Modernist Rural Landscapes” within MODSCAPES, few have attempted to approach the topic for what they primarily are: agricultural development policies. To which extent are Modernist Rural Landscapes in fact the result of a “development” policy, and of which kind of development are we actually talking about? *** Some empiric observations on the case studies considered within MODSCAPES show the oscillation of such policies between a limited number of well-established and fundamentally opposed farming models: the isolated small-holders family farm on one hand, and the US-inspired large and extensive industrial farm, with the collective farm attempting to reconcile the two. But is it possible to go beyond mere the description of the planning objectives underlying the planning scheme for this or that Modernist Rural Landscape, and make an attempt to evaluate who actually benefited and benefits from one of these agricultural development schemes? *** To this aim, the discipline of “Comparative Agriculture” promises to offer answers. It builds upon the concept of “Agrarian System” established by the French School of Human Geography to describe and understand historical rural landscapes, but aims at reconciling this mainly descriptive approach with a more action oriented output, where the critical attitude towards the notion of “development” is central. *** This contribution, whose spirit is more experimental and programmatic than assertive and conclusive, aims at testing the potential of such approach against three case studies: the Fascist reclamation of the Pontine Marshes, the early Zionist agricultural colonisation of Palestine, the Francoist internal colonisation of Spain. In doing so, it will explore the possible outcomes in terms of setting up an agenda for acting within such Modernist Rural Landscapes, rather than only describing them

As a major collaborative outcome of the “Local Capacity Building...” research project, the ECIP-lab, supported by the partner Belgian universities, developed a strategic masterplan and planning guidelines for the small town of Amdewerk, in close collaboration with citizens, local and regional authorities, and active NGO representatives in the area. Several on-site surveys and participatory planning workshops have been organized over a period of 5 years. The proposed masterplan draws on the metabolic analysis of the city’s resource flows, on the identification of major shared challenges, identifying a limited number of strategic actions which, alongside the official land use plan and regulations, are intended to foster a sustainable urban development of the city. The main proposals in fact heavily rely on the city’s landscape infrastructures to address major environmental and health-related challenges, which may significant enhance the inhabitants’ socio-economic condition and standards of living. As such, this proposal also entails some relevant principles of planning to address similar urban challenges and development issues in other small towns in Ethiopia and the Global South.

The report summarizes the agenda, scientific contents, results, contribution to the future direction of the field, and outcomes of the Exploratory research workshop held in Rome and Sabaudia (Italy) on Octobre 7-10th 2013.Le rapport synthétise le déroulement, les contenus scientifiques, les résultats, les contributions aux directions futures dans le champ, et les résultats du séminaire de recherche exploratoire tenu à Rome et Sabaudia (Italie) les 7-10 Octobre 2013.

Conception, programmation (moteur MediaWiki), mise en ligne et gestion du site "Wiki" d’un cours de "théorie du paysage" dispensé en Faculté d’Architecture La Cambre-Horta (année académique 2017/2018), et destiné à organiser les travaux d’étudiants sur le concours international pour le Parc de la Villette (Paris, 1982).

Est-il vraiment possible de parler d’une théorie du paysage? Il s’agirait tout d’abord de définir la notion de paysage: tour à tour espace perçu et lieu d’observation, section d’espace vécu d’une population distincte ou forme de gouvernement, la notion de paysage se superpose-t-elle à celle d’environnement, de territoire, d’écosystème, de nature? Par ailleurs, l’apparition consciente de cette notion dans le champ disciplinaire de l’architecture ne remonte qu’aux débuts du 19ème siècle (Meason, 1828; Loudon, 1841). Le paysage comme terrain privilégié du projet serait-il une invention récente, et les paysages plus anciens le fruit du seul hasard et non d’une intention? Outre la polysémie du mot lui-même, son terrain d’action est lui aussi sujet à une ample mobilité. En effet, l’«architecture du paysage», initialement identifiée à la noble tradition de l’art des jardins, s’est étendue en l’espace de deux siècles du jardin privé (de la noblesse, de l’aristocratie, du clergé) au parc public urbain (depuis l’apparition des jardins botaniques, en passant par les parcs pittoresques anglais et parisiens, et jusqu’aux grands parcs «naturels» américains). De plus, les défis lancés dès l’après-guerre par l’écologie, le «Land Art», ainsi que par la critique à l’«urbanisme de plan» moderniste, ont également contribué à élargir l’horizon de l’«architecture du paysage» à la globalité du projet d’aménagement du territoire (Mostafavi et Najle, 2003; Waldheim, 2004). Le paysage est donc une cible mouvante. Créateurs, protecteurs, usagers du paysage en conçoive la matérialité et en perçoivent le sens différemment. Souvent invoqué comme «lieu du meilleur» (G. Clément), comme catégorie positive par essence, il se fait parfois aussi dispositif de naturalisation des conflits sociaux ou véhicules d’idéologies totalisantes (Cosgrove). Le cours propose de parcourir quelques moments d’élaboration de théories du paysage, à partir des textes et des œuvres, comme un fragment d’une possible bibliothèque idéale du paysagiste. Il tentera d’insinuer plusieurs doutes auprès des étudiants. Le paysage serait avant tout une vue de l’esprit, une construction culturelle propre aux civilisations urbanisées: comme compensation et consolation, comme lieu d’évasion et de retrait de la sphère collective et sociale, comme antagoniste de cette même urbanité. Aujourd’hui, derrière l’ambition affichée d’en faire le concept fondateur d’un renouvellement disciplinaire de l’urbanisme et de l’aménagement du territoire, on ne peinera pas à reconnaitre son usage inavoué comme facteur d’effacement/naturalisation des rapports de force socio-économiques et de blanchiment écologique de pratiques plus anciennes. Il s’agira alors de reconnaitre dans l’histoire des théories du paysage les éléments de progrès et d’affranchissement et les usages déviés qui en ont été fait, de déceler les transformations de mentalités qui se cachent derrière ses évolutions, tout en conservant à l’esprit que c’est cette même histoire des mots et des formes qui constitue la matière première de toute pensée future du projet de paysage.