POC Bazaar St-So
Let’s mix skills at the Bazaar!
In between the city and the eco-neighbourhood project, Bazaar St-Sooccupies a former railway hall with the aim of building a place dedicated to the creative economy. The building is cut in half: on one side, there is a workshop, and on the other, exhibition, meeting and office spaces. The Bazaar’s goal is to create the perfect conditions for cooperation between companies, artists, craftspeople, citizens… But how do you create a creative and collaborative community in a fragmented place? The answer for the project’s initiators: to integrate the community in the design of the place, of its services and its programming through an iterative management.
Cohabitation of uses
This third place, initiated by the business cluster Initiatives et Citéand the cooperativeSmart, provides workspaces and facilities that optimise cohabitation and management of uses and nuisances related to various craft professions. With the co-design agency Atelier Rusch, around fifty future residents have come up with concepts related to their activities. Three challenges have been collectively identified: sharing of skills and knowledge, implementation of collaborative tools and enhancement of a creative community.
They plan to create a material library and a ” Bazaar Label” that could serve as a lever for sharing. A scalable interface combines exchange mechanisms between residents and visitors, showcasing know-hows and presenting Bazaar’s public programming: exhibitions, fairs, conferences, training courses, etc.
Developing collaboration
The Bazaar aims to be a collaborative place for a territory in search of making things and reconnecting with manual activities that create value. It remains nevertheless a workplace. The site’s managers, well aware of iterative methodologies, will therefore be in charge of making the Bazaar’s collaborative levers and platforms evolve, with the help of design tools that involve residents. In this way, the Bazaar will be able to continue to adapt to the needs of the residents and its ecosystem.
- Project holders :Initiatives et Cité, cooperative Smart
- Designers :Atelier Rusch
- Stakeholders : users of the Bazaar (staff, residents, visitors)
- Photo credit : Atelier Rusch