In a few words

Spring 2019, the col­lec­tive of archi­tects Zerm con­tacts Yes We Camp: the city of Roubaix is ​​launch­ing a call for expres­sions of inter­est for the tem­po­rary occu­pa­tion of a 6500m² con­vent, emp­ty for more than 10 years, list­ed as a mon­u­ment her­itage his­toric and locat­ed in the Epeule dis­trict.
We are prepar­ing with them the project enti­tled “a lab­o­ra­to­ry of applied fru­gal­i­ty”, which cross­es three chal­lenges: cre­at­ing a joy­ful and wel­com­ing place to live for a neigh­bor­hood in dif­fi­cul­ty, exper­i­ment­ing with a Zero-waste lifestyle, deploy­ing in a build­ing in high her­itage val­ue. Our team works reg­u­lar­ly on the project accord­ing to the for­mats and needs of the Zerm team: nar­ra­tion and over­all oper­at­ing mod­el, project man­age­ment, sup­port for the man­age­ment process of shared places, launch of the recep­tion of work­shop occu­pants- offices, a hos­tel and group recep­tion, orga­ni­za­tion of par­tic­i­pa­to­ry work­camps to trans­form the uses of the for­mer con­vent step by step.

We won in Octo­ber 2019, and two months lat­er, a first one-week camp-site was set up to set up a liv­ing base on site: fit­ting out of a con­struc­tion work­shop, pilot offices, a shared kitchen. and the first rooms to begin to inhab­it the premis­es.
Today, around ten peo­ple from the Zerm col­lec­tive live on site. The court­yard of the old school is open every Sun­day to res­i­dents, a sum­mer pro­gram is tak­ing shape for the neigh­bor­hood chil­dren, part­ner­ships are forged with local actors, the first struc­tures are set up in the offices and the hos­tel. is prepar­ing to wel­come these first vis­i­tors.

To remember

• The inter­est and facil­i­ta­tion of the imple­men­ta­tion of a fru­gal and iter­a­tive project by the city of Roubaix and the State via the AMI and the shared man­age­ment of the project.
• The qual­i­ty of the work­ing envi­ron­ment between Yes We Camp and Zerm via the dif­fer­ent for­mats of meet­ings and learn­ing and the tai­lor-made sup­port that results from it: com­ple­men­tar­i­ty of skills, respon­sive­ness, trust and com­plic­i­ty.
• The impor­tance of the archi­tec­tur­al qual­i­ty of the place and the enthu­si­asm it arous­es.
• The care tak­en in pre­serv­ing the build­ings trig­gered by the per­ma­nent pres­ence of inhab­i­tants on the site.

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