Sophie Twarog
Interiors Building Cities
Le terrain des retrouvailles: How to Re-Imagine Inherited Building Values
This project recovers the utopian ideas of a post-war national project to provide social spaces for French youth. In 1966, the Ministry of Youth and Leisure created a programme to build 1,000 youth clubs across France’s territory using prefabricated elements and local participation. Located half an hour outside of Paris in the town of Ermont, one of the youth club prototypes designed by Jean Prouvé and self-built by its inhabitants exists as a listed monument without clear function or ownership. Reimagining the site and its competition brief today creates an opportunity to restore a model that no longer serves the cultural and recreational practices it was once built for. ‘Le terrain des retrouvailles’ offers a terrain for reunion, rediscovery and revalorization. It offers places for encounters and appropriation to restore its current ownership and secure its future for the neighbourhood.