Collective Facilities / Collective Research: French Experiments after 1968

A collective history by Susana Caló, Anne Kockelkorn (ETH, Zurich), Godofredo Pereira (Royal College of Art, London), Camille Robcis (Columbia University), and Meredith TenHoor (Princeton-Mellon Initiative/Pratt Institute)

April 16 / 5 - 7 pm / SoA N-107

In the 1970s, groups of interdisciplinary researchers affiliated with a group called CERFI (the Centre d’études, de recherches et de formations institutionelles, or Center for Institutional Studies, Research and Training) developed and theorized “collective facilities,” or new infrastructures for care. In a political climate hostile to large-scale change, CERFI’s micropolitical interventions were highly ambitious, and included historical research, design projects in French New Towns, day care centers, historic preservation and reuse plans, mental hospitals, new forms of institutional psychotherapy, as well as a set of theories about infrastructure and ideology currently being translated into English. The speakers in this group will narrate the history of this moment and speak about its relevance to interdisciplinary urban research and activism today.

A closed workshop will be held prior to the event; please email Meredith TenHoor if you are interested in participating.

Co-sponsored by the Center for Architecture, Urbanism and Infrastructure; the Department of French & Italian; the Program in Media + Modernity; and the Princeton Mellon Initiative. 

Image: Nicole Sonolet, with Maria Baran, Olek Kujawski and Tristan Darros, Centre de santé mentale, Paris 13e (Mental Health Center for the 13th District), 1970-81 (Photo by Meredith TenHoor)