Texts, sketches, archival records, drawings, mockups and photographs – some 400 documents have been gathered together to reproduce, for the first time, the timeline of the development of a neighborhood which, for over 30 years, has played multiple roles, as observer and as a laboratory, an echo chamber or a forerunner of contemporary urban change.
As it tells the story of the area, the project recreates another story, in the background or in resonance: the story of the French capital, how it has governed, developed, defined itself and struggled since the 1980s, and how it sees itself in the decades to come.