Literally meaning ‘gathering place’, the agora is placed in the heart of the community. When sensing a genuine need for debate and discussion in a particular place, the agora becomes a catalyst for a dense situation of exchange. In our current individualistic society, there is need for the promotion and reconfiguration of public life and this can be achieved in tangible places such as the agora. A crucial space for the practice of democracy or for holding out conflicts, it is usually constructed in a circular shape, which demonstrates a non-hierarchical way of organizing space. Architecture, as the practice of organizing space, can influence the organization of society.
Through the often temporal character of the structure, the agora is both hunting and awakening the desire to communicate on a level playing field. The gesture of starting a dialogue in an ephemeral space can become a ritual, then a habit that settles and reinforces the physical agora by its presence more permanently.
What does it take to gather people, ideas and energies? From the minimal Agora, where the structure is formed by a succession of bodies...
Project: Hallo -Plataforma Trafaria
… to the creation of space through the disposal and relation between objects. ConstructLab explores, experiments and investigates the agora format and its possibilities.
Project: mercato dei frutti minori
The visible structure serves as support for the invisible one... and the other way around. Whether it is a joyful meeting, a discursive moment, democratic assembly or a theoretical lecture, the quality and the nature of each encounter in the agora directly rely on the specificities of its architecture.
Project: circus - Institut für Raumexperimente
This result in an astonishing moment, where visible and invisible, the architecture and its content generate a vivid and surprising ambiance, it’s a kind of magic!
Or serve in multiple and diverse occasions of the daily use. Accessibility and permeability are important to be considered and the fact that it is a little step to overcome to be the audience or actors makes the agora suitable as a reinforcement for local communities.
Project: Jardin fabrique - les Haras d'Annecy
...and they can serve a simple goal: to share a moment of togetherness.
Project: Mon(s) Invisible - le jardin suspendu
