Structures of freedom

The project Structures of freedom concerns the design of four pavilions located along the greenway of the Grandclément district in Villeurbanne, France. These imaginary microarchitectures, called Aurelias, were conceived as an experiment of a design tool created to engage architects to address the disconnect of the individual and their environment

The Structures of Freedom project was an experiment with a design tool created in my research thesis with the aim of engaging architects against what american philosopher Matthew Crawford calls the \"attention crisis\". This crisis, caused by societal reasons such as technology and the acceleration of lifestyles, is also aggravated by individual reasons such as mental preoccupation and habituation to daily spaces. It manifests as a disconnect between the individual the material reality that surrounds them. This disconnection not only worsens the environmental crisis we are facing but also makes invisible the world where we, as architects and urban planners, intervene with noble intentions.\r\nHow to create public spaces in today's cities where individuals are increasingly disconnected from their environment? To answer this question, I created a vocabulary that responds to different constraints studied. Pause to counter Speed, Curiosity, Surprise, and Subversion to counter Habituation and Mental Preoccupation. This vocabulary was then broken down into several attentive situations, supported by research on attentional dynamics, and transformed into a design tool called Lucid Dreamcatcher. It consists of several program and architectural element ideas, as well as attitudes encouraged by space.\r\nTo test this tool, I created 4 pavilions, in the style of garden follies, in the green line of the Grandclément district in Villeurbanne, France. These pavilions were designed by combining different ideas present in the Lucid Dreamcatcher and enriched by an imagination drawn from my childhood in Brazil, as well as naïve art and Japanese cinema. \r\nThese pavilions took shape through a creative process consisting of paper collages, embroidery, sketches, paper and ceramic models. But also through my attentive experience in the Grandclement neighborhood, where I was able to live countless sensitive experiences to share.