Miralles Tagliabue EMBT

Living Within a Market consists of a journey through a series of models to showcase the design process of the Plateau Central project in the metropolis of Paris. Central to the installation is a 1:50 model section of the building as an analogy of Georges Perec’s essay La vie, mode d’emploi to represent the lifestyle of the inhabitants of Plateau Central. The Plateau Central building is raised in a neighbourhood mainly consisting of an immigrant population and closely related to a marketplace. In the project, the apartments are in the center of a system which includes urban agriculture on the roofs, terraces as common spaces for the neighbors, and the presence of a food market inside the volume of the same building—conceived not only as a commercial space but also as a community space and a tool for a larger social integration. The experience of this periphery of Paris points out the fact that activities linked to food are some of the most efficient ways to achieve active participation from the collective. A market, therefore, seems to be a perfectly adequate scenario for this purpose.