"The City as a Vision" exhibition at the FRAC Centre

Divided into two sections – one historical, the other prospective – this exhibition pays tribute to historian and critic Michel Ragon who, in his books Où vivrons-nous demain? [Where will we live tomorrow?] (1963) and Prospective et Futurologie [Forecasting and Futurology] (1978), gave an introduction to the issues of experimental architecture – a field that lies at the heart of the Frac Centre’s collection. Through six thematic sections, along with a hundred or so scale models, drawings, and photomontages, the exhibition focuses on giving an overview of this search for new territories and urban configurations capable of welcoming future city-dwellers. It illustrates how, for this generation of “visionaries”, experimentation and patenting innovative technical solutions always came hand in hand with the assertion of imagery as a field for creation and anticipation. Between pragmatism and utopia, the featured projects, mostly taken from the Frac Centre’s collection, embody the optimism of the “Pop years”, the myth of a culture craving for leisure and consumption, and fascinated by the cybernetic dream and space exploration. At the end of the historical overview, the exhibition presents the contemporary projects of twenty or so internationally acknowledged agencies and examines the way these issues are re-appropriated on a wider scale today. The projects presented all answer the necessity to rethink new uses for cities, to generate resources and connect the microscale of the individual with the macro-scale of the expanding urban territory. What logics can architects develop to generate or regenerate the contemporary city between local and global scales? For further exhibition details, go to http://www.frac-centre.fr/_en/exhibitions/in-site/the-city-a-vision/the-city-a-vision-615.html