Today, a certain design is instrumentalized by industrial groups that place it at the centre of their communication strategies. The quality of the material, the aesthetics of the shapes and the beauty of the objects are praised. But what about the conditions of production of these objects?
To be a designer is to be confronted with choices of design, production and responsibility policies, more specifically in the field of the living environment, the natural territory of design. The modules created are the visible result of a double economic condition: to design and build a living space for all, for a dignified existence based on a 5000€ purchase of the module. 5000€ comes from the price awarded for the entire production. The objective observation is that this is the price required to acquire a square metre in a housing programme built in a popular historical part of the city. For whom? This question remains unanswered. These dystopian habitats raise the question of the complicity that can exist between designers and the extreme modes of industrial housing production. Dystopian, because they pose the body as a production tool stored after use, in the image of the slogan displayed in certain workshops: "A place for everything and everything in its place". These modules are conceived as a unit of measurement of habitability and a scale of production. Repeated, accumulated, reproduced and perfectly identical, they are a cold response to the functional use of the individual contained in a social organisation which, through constraint, would be tempted to control him in the totality of his acts, even the most intimate. These modules are designed to challenge us, to put us on our guard. Faced with a speculative society which, in its centrifugal acceleration, is pushing more and more of us to the margins of existence, these modules give an undoubtedly extreme vision, like a warning. For underneath the 'good and beautiful' object may lurk the grimacing spectre of violence against man. On the other hand, will design be the bearer of a new humanism and participate like any other actor in the construction of the city of man?
These living modules were designed with the students of Nathalie Bruyère & Manuel Valentin at isdaT: Benoît Cailliet, Camille Platevoet and Cheng Long Zhao.
Exhibition: Apartment 5000€
Location: Espace Croix Baragnon, Alain Lacroix, Françoise Lacoste and Elodie Sourrouil.
Production: Ateliers ville de Toulouse
Date: June 2011