October 2011 – December 2012

Coproducers:
Marseille-Provence 2013 & Club de l’immobilier Marseille Provence

The artist: Gilles Desplanques

Gilles Desplanques was born in 1977. He lives and works in Marseille.

Desplanques sees sculpture as something that is closely linked to a certain experience of space. This is not only about volumes in space (the definition of sculptural activity), but also a reaction to a unique productive context. His work is partly defined by the relationship between a piece of art and the moment it was created. However, the place where this transformation takes place is not the site of an in situ performance. The artist often has other aims: to affront the world, experience it physically, to make it into artwork. In other words, to make practices reality.

Producing objects or standardised living areas is one of the focuses of Gilles Desplanques’ work. For him, architectural forms that create standardised lifestyles are often linked to a certain kind of fatality. By extension, they show how people find it difficult to live outside cultural norms. Construction standards become a framework the artist uses to explore the foundations on which our society is built.

The project: Pop-up House

How to use the surface of a building like an orange peel – and create a house attached to the facade it originates from.

The technique used is kirigami, derived from origami. It includes cutting in addition to folding. The project makes use of and contrasts two modern architectural features. Housing and offices building models (such as towers or collective buildings) are cut and folded to create a unique and individual house (from sheds to residential prefabricated houses).
Pop-up refers to pop-up books, which apply different cutting and folding techniques. It also refers to the pop up windows that appear in the browsers of our computers. The word pop-up has parasitic connotations. In the case of the pop-up house, the house is built with materials taken from another building. It is then attached to it. The host building opens out its skin, stretching beyond its architectural limits and creating a new space.

My sculpture in each project is the result of questioning the project context. The process thus leads to a scene-specific proposal. The architectural dismantling I operate in most of my projects is an invitation to construct differently, blurring the notions of construction/deconstruction. Regardless of the initial stages, and depending on the history and expected future, I bring imbalance and ambiguity in a state believed to be a steady state.

Co-producer: Le Club de l’immobilier

The Club de l’Immobilier Marseille Provence was set up in 1997 for regional professionals in the real estate business: architects, insurers, lawyers, bankers, consultants, builders, developers, investors, promoters and building managers. Its aim is to provide a forum for discussion, debate, learning, and training. It also promotes professions in the real estate industry, and the Marseille region. Since it was set up, the Club has organised many meetings, breakfast debates, training sessions, visits and trips. Every year, it organises the Nuit de l’Immobilier cocktail evening.