A mobile holiday camp close-to-town for nature education
Five different, futuristic shacks in front of a mountain range, designed to spend a night outdoors in nature, just an hour's walk from town. UrbanBivouac tackles the barriers, notably cultural, of young people from working and lower classes to connect with alpine nature. The stunning architecture, sustainable design and strong stakeholder involvement support informal education with strong impact.
Regional
France
City of Grenoble
Auvergne-Rhone-Alpes Region
It addresses urban-rural linkages
It refers to other types of transformations (soft investment)
Yes
EAFRD : European Agricultural Fund for Rural Development
Espaces Valléens Programme managed by Parc Naturel Regional Chartreuse (PNRC) on behalf of Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes Region
No
Yes
As a representative of an organisation
Name of the organisation(s): City of Grenoble Type of organisation: Public authority (European/national/regional/local) First name of representative: Claus Last name of representative: Habfast Gender: Male Nationality: France If relevant, please select your other nationality: Germany Function: City Councillor Address (country of permanent residence for individuals or address of the organisation)<br/>Street and number: Hôtel de Ville, 11 boulevard Jean Pain Town: Grenoble Postal code: 38000 Country: France Direct Tel:+33 6 66 66 23 84 E-mail:claus.habfast@grenoble.fr Website:http://www.grenoble.fr
High mountains surround Grenoble, yet half of its citizens have never been there, held back by multiple barriers: financial, mobility, knowledge, not least cultural. Addressing these requires a multi-faceted approach of education, affordable equipment, and suitable natural spaces (notably in terms of fitness and accessibility).
50 years ago, holiday camps did exactly this, bringing millions of children and families into the mountains. Today, they have largely disappeared. UrbanBivouac is a pilot project to reconnect working and lower-class urban citizens with alpine nature through informal education.
Students from the local architecture school ENSAG designed and built five different, avant-garde shacks and set them up on a belvedere close to Grenoble, connected to town by cable car and hiking trails. The shacks' design greatly magnified the user experience and put nature first. No trace was left after removal of the structures, 100% recyclable, for deployment on the next site.
Groups of young people bivouacked free of charge (800 people), the remaining slots were given to individuals at 10€/night (900 people). For most, it was a first-in-life experience.
Many stakeholders co-operated: youth centres invited and accompanied the young people, including migrants and handicapped people; guardians from real alpine huts welcomed and briefed everybody, and looked after them during their stays; NGOs offered educational activities (nature observation, best practices); the city administration managed the project and provided support like sleeping bags, simple meals, dry toilets, security etc.
The project took place during Grenoble European Green Capital 2022 without receiving any funding from it. Two university-led evaluations confirmed the results in terms of user experience, inclusivity and impact. In 2023, the shacks will be deployed at another site by the Chartreuse natural regional parc. Design and documentation are available for replication.
Mountains
Inclusivity
Nature education
Enchantment
Architecture
Outdoor activities like skiing and glacier hiking are the privilege of a minority, often carry a big carbon footprint, and present an increasing threat to nature and biodiversity in the mountain resorts where they are practised.
Connecting a majority of urban citizens with alpine nature requires a different outdoor culture, accessible to everybody, with a much smaller carbon footprint and respecting often-fragile ecosystems. The objective of UrbanBivouac in terms of sustainability was the proof-of-concept that experiencing the magic of alpine nature does not have to be in contradiction with sustainability (and inclusivity).
As an educational project, it targeted in the first instance young people and those excluded from today’s mainstream outdoor culture for financial, mobility, physical or cultural reasons. However, it was open to everybody seeking a sustainable alternative to his or her own mountain activities.
Key to meeting this objective were: a spectacular location, close to the city, with however a minimum impact on nature and biodiversity; the unique design of the shacks and how they were made: futuristic, aerial structures of pre-assembled lightweight components that could be carried by 2-3 persons and did not need helicopter logistics.
The bivouac preserved most conditions of wilderness: no electricity, dry toilets, access by foot or cable car, simple meals, visitors were asked to take their waste back home. After the summer and the shacks' removal, no trace was left on the site.
The initiative can be exemplary as it demonstrates that a viable successor to the holiday camps of the 20th century is feasible. Preserving all informal education elements, it replaces large buildings with a light, mobile and less intrusive infrastructure, set up in the middle of nature, yet close to urban centres.
For UrbanBivouac to be aesthetically pleasing and providing a good experience, several requirements had to be met to reach the overall objective of a lasting educational and cultural impact on every participant:
1. Identify a location close to town offering natural beauty, a stunning view, a good distance from potential disturbances (this turned out to be a challenge), and compatible with safety/regulations (another challenge);
2. In addition to beautiful design, optimise the shacks' spatial, luminous and acoustic atmosphere (window views, dormitory comfort), and how people live together in these small spaces, and collectively on the site. Therefore, a dedicated 5th shack for sharing the meals was added to the four shacks for sleeping.
3. Ensure a personalised welcome and all-round caring by a guardian as well as suitable educational activities for the groups by local NGOs;
4. Anticipate the needs of inexperienced people in practical features such as dining and storage space, lack of equipment (sleeping bags), cleaning, simple meals, and ease of access (cable car) for physically challenged participants. Despite this support, preserve the key elements of a bivouac in the wilderness.
The design of the shacks can be exemplary in two aspects: it enables the sensory experience of nature, including spending a night there, and as a shelter, it does not disconnect from nature. Second, the design and build by students of architecture enables an aesthetics and user experience tailored for young people.
Contrary to popular belief, alpine outdoor leisure in France is not very inclusive: according to a recent academic study, 68% of users are male, and revenues 50% above average. Disabled, physically challenged, and citizens with a migration background are virtually absent.
The barriers are not just financial but also cultural. This is why UrbanBivouac is in the first instance an educational project countering the belief that "mountains are not for me". Also, since the pandemic citizens of all backgrounds wish to reconnect with nature. In the mountains, they often lack basic knowledge in terms of safety and respect of nature. This makes nature education even more timely and important.
Inclusivity is also about diversity and UrbanBivouac was open to everybody: half of the 1700 participants were "ordinary" people, mostly families with children who had registered via Internet. Evaluation interviews with 59 of these 900 people confirmed that they represent socially privileged citizens, similar to mainstream outdoor leisure. For 50%, it was their first night ever in a bivouac. 90% wish to renew this or a similar experience.
The other half were 800 people mostly under the age of 20 (90%), invited from deprived neighbourhoods. For many, the night in the bivouac was their only summer "vacation". 15% were handicapped or migrants. Evaluation interviews with 8 groups confirmed the big impact a first experience close to nature made to people whose lives are largely confined to dense urban areas. Without the invitation and accompaniment by municipal youth centres, they would never have come to the bivouac.
The project can be considered exemplary in how it succeeds to mobilize people who would otherwise have been excluded. Lowering financial and physical barriers alone is insufficient to ensure inclusivity if cultural barriers remain in place.
According to recent academic research, half of Grenoble’s inhabitants never go into the (nearby) mountains. UrbanBivouac is a milestone in Grenoble’s long-term policy to connect all citizens with alpine nature and at the same time, make outdoor leisure more sustainable.
People from working and lower classes often need to be actively encouraged to dare “unknown” activities, including to connect with nature. Grenoble’s youth and community centres in deprived neighbourhoods were the main relays for this task, informing about UrbanBivouac, constituting groups and accompanying them, as for any other informal education project. Group interviews in the frame of the evaluation established the strong cultural and educational impact of the project on participants, and identified improvements. These mainly concern logistics and practical aspects, to be taken into account for 2023.
In 2022, Grenoble set up a stakeholder group of some ten NGOs (local alpine clubs, reginal parcs, environment pressure groups, informal nature education) to work on best practices to reduce the environmental impact of mountaineering: public transport/car sharing, repair/reuse of material, heat wave adaptation. Conferences, a book, websites, coach transport on Sundays have been concrete results. UrbanBivouac was a great stimulus for this work. These NGOs facilitate dissemination, for example by a regional parc in the northern French alps interested to replicate the project. Grenoble also plans dissemination via the network of the EU Strategy for the Alpine Region.
The project had a major impact on the reorganisation of Grenoble’s “Maison de la Montagne” in 2023. Its tourist information function was dropped, and is being replaced by a programme of year-round informal education and practical training on sustainable mountaineering, with schools, youth and community centres. The cultural activities with artists and local NGOs on mountain/nature topics will be strengthened.
UrbanBivouac involved stakeholders at European, regional and local levels, covering a wide range of disciplines/activities, coordinated by the City of Grenoble's administration.
The European Agricultural Fund managed by Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes Region and Chartreuse Regional Natural Parc (PNRC) made significant funding available. PNRC also deploys educational activities towards school pupils. Grenoble-Alpes-Métropole provided existing shacks for logistics.
Grenoble's national school of architecture (ENSAG) was the partner which designed and built the shacks as a collaborative project by some 20 students under professorial supervision. Their interdisciplinary, collaborative design favoured cross-fertilization and knowledge/skills transfer between teaching and academic research, national and local authorities, industry and civil society.
Getting a city administration, a regional parc and a school of architecture work together in this way was a major achievement.
The regional association of alpine and mountaineering clubs (FFCAM) provided advice on day-to-day operations, user interaction and, most importantly, hired the experienced guardians from mountain huts for the bivouac. The Grenoble cable car company provided transport if required.
A large number of local NGOs and youth/community centres were involved in the project in a loosely organized project team put together by the City of Grenoble. The NGOs covered nature education (FNE, Jeunes et Nature), animal conservation (LPO), astronomy (Auroralpes), culture and educational games (artists, local museums), hiking and pastoralism (PNRC and FAI38).
The project represented close interaction between education and architecture, with the city administration as a matchmaker in between.
Informal (popular) education provides citizens with knowledge and culture outside school. In Grenoble, local alpine clubs and their regional federation (FFCAM de l'Isère) organise since many years mountain excursions for young people and families from deprived neighbourhoods, through some 10 municipal youth and community centres. Some 10 conservation and cultural NGOs joined the project to ensure the educational activities: UrbanBivouac was more than spending a night in a shack, it represented a holistic approach to nature education: guiding towards a new sensorial experience, transferring knowledge on best practices, reassuring anxious newcomers, encouraging social interaction, opening the mind through observation of nature or the night sky etc.
The students from ENSAG went far beyond an architect's typical role: they designed the shacks using digital tools for parametric modelling, built them with modern digital manufacturing tools (laser cutting, water jet cutting, robotics), assembled and tested them at ENSAG, transported and assembled them on site. They were also their first, pilot users. The students interacted closely with experts on sustainable materials and manufacturing, with mountaineers on design and user experience, with various government administrations on authorisations and safety, and with quite a few unforeseen technical obstacles. A "traditional" building project would have needed three times as long to complete, and would not have fascinated users in the same way.
The city administration established the links through a loosely organized project team managed part-time by a director-level staff member.
UrbanBivouac features two main innovation elements: a new sensorial and educational experience of alpine nature, different from competition and physical effort in the mainstream; and the mobile, sustainable shacks.
Typically, a shack provides shelter on a hike to summit. In UrbanBivouac the shacks were both close to the city, and on the summit: in and around the shacks, interacting socially and through education, users connected with nature. Rather than celebrating a physical effort to reach a summit, people enjoyed being close to nature, close to others, and being able to evade every day's urban life. For a majority of citizens, and for the benefit of conservation, this is a sustainable and inclusive approach to connect with nature.
Shacks are nothing new, in no type of wilderness. UrbanBivouac is innovative as it represents a temporary, minimum-intrusive occupation of a beautiful site, leaving no trace after a summer season. The avant-garde design, magnifying the beauty of nature rather than just providing shelter, contributes largely to the sensory experience for an inexperienced, urban public. No long travel is needed, neither any previous experience nor a major physical effort to spend a night in the wilderness.
Since a few years, yurts and tiny houses, even tents mounted on treetops are available for tourists, often socially privileged people turning towards more responsible and sustainable travel. The five shacks designed and built in this project represent a much higher level in terms of design, sustainability, and impact on nature compared with the majority of these new accommodations. UrbanBivouac has the potential to revive the municipal holiday camps that most cities had to abandon or reduce over the past 20 years. It is also interesting to note that the possibility to come with one's own tent was barely used, the shacks being a much more attractive alternative.
Two elements – the design of the shacks and the project idea coordinated by a city administration – are those with the biggest potential for replication.
The design of the shacks is quite different from "catalogue" tiny houses and also from "rustic" shacks made of logwood. The shacks have in common with some tiny houses the modern look and advanced manufacturing, but they are also architects’ designs conceived around a specific use case. Most importantly, they are made to be moved around and deployed at different sites. This new approach can be of interest to other contexts and sites. The national school of architecture ENSAG has conducted other projects of adaptable, sustainable architecture (cf. Solar Decathlon) and tactical urbanism.
A holistic, inclusive approach to nature education has to bring together different disciplines and stakeholders. One must not forget the administrative work linked to such a project, even if it does not require a formal building permit. Cities and public bodies are well suited to replicate the project together with local NGOs, schools and educational entities, as they have often already operated holiday camps in the past (or still do). As an educational project, UrbanBivouac can be replicated close to a city on an easily accessible nature site, or more remotely if it is connected to an existing holiday camp or in partnership with a rural community.
Design reports on the shacks are available (see supporting documentation). For the informal education, Grenoble is ready to advice on how to best mobilise local resources for a similar project. This could also happen via the EU Strategy for the Alpine Region network.
The methodology used for the project could best be described as a combination of an agile approach and design thinking. The time to delivery was limited (one year) and needed rapid prototyping, frequent adaptation, and collaboration. In any stage, however, empathy towards user needs and constant iteration was necessary to identify the solutions to often multi-faceted problems.
Two examples may illustrate this:
Bastille hill is a protected site closed to a national monument (a former military fort), which results in multiple constraints for deployment of any, even temporary infrastructure. Different sites for the Bivouac were studied in parallel and finally, a site at a distance of just 100m from a public visitor car park was chosen. The small winding road leading to the car park had to be closed after 21h00 in order to ensure the necessary quietude. Closing the road and enforcing this was a late, but necessary decision which met quite some resistance. Without the agile approach, the project would have stalled multiple times for this or other reasons.
Design thinking mattered too because the quality of the experience was key to meeting the educational objectives. The project was not just about deploying architecturally beautiful structures in a breath-taking natural environment, but to provide a user experience as close as possible to a “classical” night in the wilderness, along with educational activities for groups. The open minds of the architecture students and their professor, but also the acceptance by outdoor and mountaineering professionals to bring their experience very close to town were not evident from the outset, and they required a strong transversal project management.
Global challenges like climate change, poverty or environmental degradation can often be addressed locally by solutions suited to local communities with unique needs and circumstances. The Alps with 14 million inhabitants in seven countries provide such a local context, which is closely linked to the presence of about 60 million people in nearby densely populated valleys: remote rural territories interact with industrialised valleys in a way that today, also includes a largely unsustainable leisure and tourism business.
Although the tourism and leisure industry is busy addressing climate and biodiversity challenges, any solution will require mountain resorts to lower their activity and distribute it over four seasons, making today's mainstream alpine outdoor activities even more elite and expensive.
UrbanBivouac not needing a highly touristic site, it could be a model for many rural communities that are not mountain resorts today, to design and develop similar projects in cooperation with nearby cities in view of more sustainable outdoor leisure practices. A main takeaway from the project is that just deploying the shacks on a beautiful spot is insufficient to attract all citizens. Sustainability and inclusion are also linked to lowering cultural barriers and to an education approach.
It is obvious that UrbanBivouac is a proof of concept, yet it has been completed and evaluated with success. Its design and collaborative principles are universal and can be adapted to a large range of local contexts. The emergence of follow-up projects would certainly foster the transition of mainstream mountain leisure towards more sustainable practices.
UrbanBivouac is a completed pilot project. The green light was given in spring 2021 and the bivouacs were deployed between May and end September 2022. In December 2022, the final report and the evaluation reports were presented and discussed by the project team (cf. the supporting documents).
The benefits for the 1700 users in 2022 have been analysed and discussed in detail in the evaluation reports.
The shacks will be donated, in March 2023, to Chartreuse Regional Natural Parc who wishes to deploy them as of summer 2023 at a park site accessible by public transport, opening the project to more cities. PNRC has a long experience in informal and formal nature education and is ideally suited to continue the project, and possible replicate it with other regional parks.
Grenoble is currently taking initiatives, of which applying for the New European Bauhaus Prize 2023 is part, to make the project also widely known internationally, notably in other alpine countries. It will also work with networks like EuroMontana and EUSALP. The city is very interested to work with other municipalities and NGOs.
Among the key new competences listed in the European framework on sustainability, the following are relevant for the project:
Promoting nature: this competence is obviously at the heart of the informal education provided by UrbanBivouac to the users.
Systems thinking: the holistic approach that brought together architects, mountaineers, educators and a city administration is a good example for systems thinking. All participants in the project gained in systems thinking competence.
Adaptability: as outlined in the above description, the project was constantly adapted during development and deployment whilst keeping in sight the overall objectives and quality of user experience. It also represents an example of adapting a long-standing activity (informal nature education) to a changing societal and economic context.
Collective action: even though most stakeholders in the project are used to work together, such a wide range of disciplines and nature of activities is uncommon. It was a formative experience for everybody.
