Archival City. Bridging Urban Past and Future

Programme de recherche porté par l’Université Gustave Eiffel (Isite Future)

Core team : Vincent Lemire, Louise Corvasier, Isabelle Gautheron, Valérie Gouet-Brunet, Thierry Guillopé, Paul Lecat, Nathalie Lancret, Georges Lomné, Giuliano Milani, Frédéric Moret, Yann Potin, Pijika Pumketkao, Charles Riondet, Nathalie Roseau, Loïc Vadelorge (historiens, architectes, geomaticiens, archivistes and documentalistes).

PROJECT 

ARCHIVAL-CITY aims to propose new ways of accessing, viewing and using the city archives. Therefore, it is slated to become a key resource for better understanding and exploiting urban archives, and also to imagine, debate and plan the city of the future by incorporating robust data from the past. It will serve as the bridge and communication link that was missing between those who are interested in the city’s past and those building its future. Used not only by researchers, historians and archivists, but also by local government, policy-makers and urban operators, as well as citizens eager to take part in their urban environment.

STUDY FIELDS

The heart of ARCHIVAL-CITY’s approach consists of questioning the concept of urban archives on an international scale. Six fields have been chosen, and for each, one major issue will be examined:

• Algiers: archives displaced due to a colonial context
• Bologna: archiving and indexing over the very long term
• Chiang-Mai: how to archive the ephemeral architecture of a city
• Greater Paris: the issue of shifting cities and archives to a metropolitan scale
• Jerusalem: the very high diversity of languages and communities archived
• Quito: urban disasters and resilient archives

Avancement du programme

La recherche menée au sein de l’UMR AUSser sous la direction de Nathalie Lancret concerne l’inventaire des documents sur « la ville ordinaire » de Chiang Mai (Thailande) – lieux de la vie quotidienne, espaces vivants, habités et en transformation. Elle est réalisée au sein du centre de recherche documentaire IPRAUS/AUSser de l’École nationale supérieure d’architecture de Paris-Belleville (ENSA Paris-Belleville).

Valorisation

Un colloque international a été organisé dans le cadre de ce programme par Nathalie Lancret et Pijika Pumketkao : “Archives fantômes, fantômes d’archives. L’histoire des villes entre disparitions, dispersions, reconstitutions et restitutions documentaires”, tenu les 17-18 novembre 2022, aux Archives nationales (Pierrefitte-sur-Seine) : consulter le programme détaillé