Cité du design 2025: bringing life through design – La Perm’
The project is led by the local authority of Saint-Étienne Métropole, to give a new start to the Manufacture district, the former industrial area of the arms factory. La Perm' was created by students and teachers from the Saint-Étienne School of Art and Design to co-design part of the district.
The project consists of taking education outside its walls. La Perm' team works with designers, companies, local authorities and residents in a transversal and interdisciplinary way.
Local
France
Saint-Etienne Métropole
Mainly urban
It refers to other types of transformations (soft investment)
No
No
Yes
As a representative of an organisation
Name of the organisation(s): Cité du design – École supérieure d’art et design Type of organisation: Other public institution First name of representative: Isabelle Last name of representative: VERILHAC Gender: Female Nationality: France Function: Head of International Affairs and Innovation Address (country of permanent residence for individuals or address of the organisation)<br/>Street and number: 3, rue Javelin Pagnon Town: Saint-Etienne Postal code: 42000 Country: France Direct Tel:+33 6 15 68 04 83 E-mail:isabelle.verilhac@citedudesign.com Website:https://www.citedudesign.com
"Cité du design 2025" is a project led by the local authority of Saint-Étienne Métropole, to give a new start to the Manufacture district, the former industrial area of the arms factory of Saint-Étienne. Transformed in depth, it will become a lively district, open to all, bringing together a new leisure and cultural centre and an economic platform for innovation through design on an international scale.
As part of the “Cité du design 2025” project, the ESADSE (Saint-Etienne Higher School of Art and Design) is proposing to codesign part of the district (gardens, student residence, squares, streets, the north-east inner courtyard). La Perm’ - a team of ESADSE students and staff "unfolding as a rhizome" in the heart of the Manufacture district - was created for this purpose by design students and professor Elizabeth Guyon. Since January 2022, the Perm' team has been exploring subjects and spaces and organising events and meetings with the inhabitants of the district, and the project's stakeholders. The aim of the Perm' is to allow the “school's inhabitants” to seize this opportunity, to question the development plan, to enrich it, and sometimes even to contradict it through various educational initiatives. These initiatives, located in the neighbourhood, take the form of events (Campus Party), workshops (Radio, Public Life) or even six-monthly projects (Flags).
La Perm’ works closely with professional designers, companies, local authorities, and residents in a transversal and interdisciplinary way. All participants teach and learn from each other, thus professionalizing the students and opening the minds of others in a continuous process of learning, upskilling, and reskilling.
La Perm’ experiment is a concrete project, useful for the territory, involving citizens.
In January 2023, to conclude the first stage of the project, the students presented their proposals at the “Campus Party” - an exhibition and neighbourhood party.
- industrial heritage
- new way of learning
- territory as a learning laboratory
- co-creation with inhabitants
- upskilling/ reskilling
The Manufacture district symbolises the industrial history of Saint-Etienne. The buildings of the former arms factory have been partially renovated and now host a variety of actors, cultural institutions, schools, incubators, universities, media, and co-working spaces.
The redevelopment of the Manufacture district presents many challenges:
- soil polluted by industry
- multi-purpose use, conflicts of use of public spaces
- traffic problems, lack of soft mobility solutions
- spaces that are poorly developed and not very legible at the crossroads of three higher education establishments
- lack of climate shelters, electricity, drinking water, waste management, public signage.
- exponential needs in terms of catering, relaxation, meetings, and entertainment (2300 students in 2025)
In response to these issues, the project team proposes to:
- Experiment with eco pastoralism: soil regeneration, freshness island, maintenance of green spaces, perpetuation of uses developed over the medium term.
- Prototype display devices in the public space.
- Take care of the interior/exterior thresholds and passages.
- Switch to soft modes (pedestrian / bicycle) and control motorised logistical travel on the scale of the district
- Consider the evolution of constraints linked to the seasons and the climate.
In the Manufacture district, there are also the neighbourhood's private gardens, which present multiple challenges:
- Former private gardens, now open to the public but designed for low use
- A heritage garden, "pocket garden”
- A nature built over centuries with exceptional trees.
The project team proposes to take advantage of the "pocket garden" aspect, and plant alcoves, while preserving it through theming of uses, measured developments, collective governance:
- Open the garden to thematic uses "reading, speaking, listening, performing"
- Favour a light installation in the existing environment
- Develop a programme of activities with the co-inhabitants
The students involved in this project are art and design students. They use the methodologies of co-creation, exchange and sharing with the inhabitants and different actors of the Manufacture area to imagine creative and aesthetic solutions for the district.
Design is a discipline that employs user-centred techniques that put the individual at the heart of innovation ecosystem and process. Empathy is a different way of seeing and constructing the world using this ability to pick up on and understand someone else’s feelings.
The project is divided into several stages, the first of which was dedicated to research, field studies, exchange, experience, and observation. The objective is to become aware of and to enhance the different aspects of the Manufacture's heritage.
The project is in line with the “Cité du design 2025” plan, which will see the creation of a centre for leisure, culture, and innovation through design with:
-the installation in 2024 of a new Design Gallery of national scope and ambition. Organised by the Cité du design and the Saint-Étienne Métropole Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, this space of almost 1,000 m², unique in France in terms of its size and theme, will present design works from the four largest French collections.
-The Biennale Internationale Design Saint-Etienne.
- The Cité du design and its exhibitions open to all and the redevelopment of the large events hall to host numerous permanent events throughout the year.
- La Cabane du design (the Design Hut), which introduces children to scientific and creative design culture in a fun way.
Meadow
The part of the project that best expresses this key objective is called the “Meadow”. The aim here is to repair the living and make a neighbourhood by creating the conditions for appropriation and governance through experimenting with ways of living together in the "meadow". Envisage several temporalities allowing for a perennial deployment of uses and developments. Living by designing and designing by living. This includes:
-Taking care of the crossings and meeting points and breaks between residents, pupils/parents and students
-Creating a neighbourhood by designing and sharing common projects and moments around "banquets": collective above-ground vegetable gardens, collective kitchen, neighbourhood meals. These "banquets" can punctuate the initiatives carried out in the squares as well as in the other areas of the neighbourhood.
-Experimenting with eco pastoralism and transforming the square into an urban meadow: soil regeneration, freshness island, maintenance of green spaces, perpetuation of uses developed over the medium term.
Campus Party
The project team drew on their research into the methods, reasons and issues of celebration and gatherings around the world to create a Campus Party: the celebration as a space for negotiations - making campuses in our streets and squares. The aim is to explore how party and celebration can be used to define areas of negotiation, to collect the desires and needs of the collective, to build together while experimenting with the uses already targeted.
The Cité du design 2025 project can be considered as an object of continuous study allowing to experiment, to study the uses by taking advantage of the various kinds of people who live there or frequent it (students, teachers, pupils, parents, entrepreneurs, etc.), as well as the flow of visitors to the district to generate a stimulating environment, favouring creativity and emotions.
The Cité du design 2025 project is led by Saint-Etienne Métropole and implies the citizens. A usage study has been carried out. It involved all the inhabitants and community associations of the Manufacture district, those who live, work or visit this historic and creative district.
Five topics were opened for consultation:
- Squares and streets,
- Parks and gardens,
- Soft mobility,
- Shops and the Carnot market,
- The socio-cultural third place.
Within the framework of the students' project - La Perm', a permanence has been set up by the student team which made it possible to meet the inhabitants of the district Manufacture, schools and faculties, neighbourhood committees and popular education associations, local businesses, cultural sites, and all the actors of the Cité du design 2025 project to exchange and share, to find creative and aesthetic solutions for the neighbourhood.
It is a tangible project, benefiting the area and its inhabitants. The aim is to make the Manufacture district a lively neighbourhood, open to all, bringing together education, recreation and culture, and an economic platform for innovation through design.
The student team, led by Professor Elizabeth Guyon, is working closely with professional designers, companies and local authorities, and residents in a transversal and interdisciplinary way. Manufacture district is a place for experimentation, a multidisciplinary laboratory. The district allows the sharing of know-how and good practices, information on existing local initiatives, but also national and european projects via partnerships and cooperation actions of the institutions operating in the district.
Among the flagship institutions located in the district are the Cité du design - the Ecole supérieure d'art et design (ESADSE), a member of BEDA - a platform for higher education, economic development and promotion of design and art; the Centre des Savoirs pour l'Innovation - a training centre, documentary resources and innovation-entrepreneurship-technology transfer; the Grande Usine Créative to support the creation of companies and the development of start-ups; Télécom Saint-Etienne - a major public school for general digital engineers; the Mixeur - a third place of arts/science/design/business, an incubator for innovative creative projects and a place for meetings, exchanges and emulation; the Bâtiment des Hautes Technologies (BHT), an incubator for young start-ups specialising in the fields of manufacturing, health, optics and vision; the Fabuleuse Cantine - a community canteen; the Paule and Joseph Thiollier School Group; Villages by CA - a system of start-up accelerators, and the Institut d'optique etc.
These institutions have a local activity, but also regional, national, European and international projects and partnerships. For example, the Cité du design is the coordinator of St-Etienne in the UNESCO network of creative cities of design. And there is CIRIDD - The International Resource and Innovation Centre for Sustainable Development - an active partner in all sustainable development initiatives at local, national and European level.
In Saint-Etienne, the Manufacture is the creative economy and innovation district. It connects everyday life, technology, art, and culture. Organised on the model of a park city, open to the neighbouring districts, this district covers more than 100 hectares.
The need for decompartmentalization is a necessity for building a sustainable, inclusive and beautiful world. The project aims to co-create a shared space for experimentation and multidisciplinary sharing, which brings together people with different backgrounds, experiences and complementary skills.
Design, art and urban planning are just a few of the disciplines that are brought together in this phase of the project. The project is enriched by the involvement of representatives of third places, popular education associations, green space maintenance technicians, and many others.
Cité du design 2025 benefits from the FABécole project. This is an ESADSE project that aims to get companies to collaborate with students. The objective is for students to use the know-how of professionals to create projects and to enable them to be industrialised.
Among the companies with whom the students are working in this project, , there is Vial Construction, a local masonry company. The students think about shapes, concepts and layouts based on observations of the city and the furniture already present in the urban environment. As residents of the Manufacture district, they have noticed certain gaps: shelters, places to eat, or simply places to sit and create links between the residents of the district. Integrating this work into the design of urban furniture could help to meet the expectations of local residents.
The students have established a good relationship with Vial Construction, allowing them to work on technical solutions and to get to know the different desires of each one.
The project consists of bringing education and school learning out of its walls. The student team is working with professional designers, companies and local authorities, and residents in a transversal and interdisciplinary way. All participants teach and learn from each other, thus professionalizing the students and opening the minds of others in a continuous process of learning, upskilling and reskilling.
The objectives are to learn from others (students, companies, inhabitants, researchers…) and henceforth “break” the walls of the school through permanent learning in an inclusive approach. The project offers new ways of learning by doing and collaborating.
Its goals are to :
- federate by giving voice to the people who are not used to having a say in decision making (students, third-places, popular education associations, maintenance technicians of the green spaces…)
- meet the actors of the Cite du design 2025 projects
- think about the new usages, functions, and governance principles
- carry out workshops to elaborate pedagogical projects, partnerships…
- coordinate the different actors so that they can work together
Our initiative could easily be replicated or transferred to other places, groups of beneficiaries and contexts.
In particular, the following elements and parts of the project:
-Bringing education and school learning out of its walls, students’ team is working closely with companies, local authorities, and residents in a transversal and interdisciplinary way.
-Create living workshops by taking care of the relationship between the inhabitants and the land that hosts them.
-La Perm’ – setting a permanent space to bring out a programme, to invite, to receive and to give, to create links between all the "inhabitants" of the school and with the "inhabitants" of the neighbourhood.
-Campus Party – how party and celebration can be used to define areas of negotiation, to collect the desires and needs of the collective, to build together while experimenting with the uses already targeted.
In 2022, the "Cité du design 2025" project was selected as "Transformation of Places of Learning" by NEB team.
The project team brings school learning out of its walls by setting up a team and a space – La Perm’, a counter-space in the sense that this space grows out of the middle, without borders but crossed by them, fertile and proliferating, open, experimental, joyful, plastic.
The purpose of the permanency is to create links between all the "inhabitants" of the school and the "inhabitants" of the neighbourhood.
It is open to all residents of the district in order to elaborate together the projects that to be carry out between now and 2025, but also to question together this development plan, its content, its temporality, to participate in the mediation actions around Cité du design 2025 and to joyfully propose new actions, projects and temporalities.
The aim of the Perm' is to become permanent over time: initially a place for the emergence of programmes and projects, it will be, at the time of the realisation of the projects - perhaps in the form of satellite permanencies held by the students on each project - a "site" permanency which appears to be a powerful tool for bringing together the hand that draws and the hand that realises.
The Perm' allows to:
- Unite _ give a voice to those who are not used to or do not have the opportunity to talk to each other within the school and beyond (notably students from neighbouring schools to think about common outdoor spaces, popular education centres, the future third place, the city's green space maintenance staff etc.)
- Get to know _ Meetings with the actors of the Cité du design 2025 project / the inhabitants ( schools and faculty, neighbourhood committees and popular education centres, cultural places, companies...)
- Questioning _ for example, meetings with professional urbanists, experts
- To make emerge _ workshops and sessions to be invented to elaborate pedagogical projects, partnerships, panels
- Documenting _ Telling what is going on
- Coordinate _ Help the different actors to work together
The project aims to support Saint-Etienne, UNESCO creative city of design and member of the European Coalition of Inclusive and Sustainable Cities, in meeting the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals 7-12 which converge around the question of the need to become greener and more inclusive.
These objectives will be applied to a district - the Manufacture district - which is becoming more green, more lively, more accessible.
To achieve this, the experimentation draws upon existing approaches of learning by doing that is cross-sectoral and trans-disciplinary and tests the way these can serve as a model for collaborative innovation.
Since January 2022, the ESADSE has been involved in the "Cité du design 2025" district development project, led by Saint-Etienne Métropole.
On 26 January 2023, La Perm' invited Saint Etienne students and the inhabitants of Manufacture district to discover the results of the first stage of this project:
From graphic proposals, based on flags or typography, to urban furniture, via a radio: the creativity of ESADSE students was expressed in all its forms, right up to the Campus Party, a prototype, joyful and experimental party which brought together the student community and guests in the heart of the district.
Planning of the project:
January 2022: Definition of the mission
- Meetings with Saint-Etienne Métropole and AMO Design to specify the mission and agree on the principle of permanence.
- Identification and meeting with the other actors of the Manufacture district (schools, incubators, etc.)
- Presentation of the idea to ESADSE colleagues /discussions with the school management
February to July 2022
- Permanence - Bringing out the pedagogical programme.
1 day a week by Elizabeth Guyon, from Monday to Friday assisted by students.
September 2022 to January 2023
- Permanence - Coordinating educational projects (study, project management, implementation)
26 January 2023
– Campus Party
Invitation to inhabitants, teachers, students to discover a first stage of pedagogical project: a joyful and experimental exhibition and party in the heart of what should become the shared spaces of the Manufacture's student community (Invitation in annexe)
January to June 2023
-Re-evaluation of the time to be spent and the objectives within the framework of the Perm' project for the years 2023 and 2024.
In 2023, the Perm’ will continue the work of co-construction concerning the areas entrusted to the ESADSE and the coordination of educational initiatives within the Cité du design 2025 project.
The initiative enables practical, interdisciplinary and locally relevant learning. It gives design students the knowledge, skills and attitudes to build a greener, more sustainable society. The project is based on openness and dialogue with the different actors of the Manufacture district in order to respond to the challenges of the neighbourhood in the context of socio-economic and environmental changes. The multiplicity of institutions in the neighbourhood allows for the sharing of know-how and good practices, and information on existing local initiatives. It is a place of experimentation, a multidisciplinary laboratory. This will enrich the students' education both in terms of creativity and professionalism. Students participating in this project improve their skills, particularly in areas and disciplines such as urban planning, eco-design, public policy, design thinking, design doing, green thinking. Working with different companies ( construction, landscaping etc) to realise projects in the neighbourhood will provide students with practical and useful skills for their entry into the labour market.
Cité du design - ESADSE is member of the European Pact for skills community: the Large-scale skills partnership for the Cultural and Creative Industries Ecosystem.
