Brownfields + Cultural

Cabane

Figure imposée : the hut

Dimension available for the province 2.40 m by 2.40 m, it's big bulky and really hard to fetch.

Children's huts, at a time when adults are becoming infants, when the big kif consists in thinking they are Peter Pans in need of green shorts and feathers up their asses who, to satisfy this supposed ecological need, can rent very expensive tree houses, frozen yurts, plastic tepees... At a time when even the stupid stuff is being recycled, it is reassuring to design a children's hut. Just for kids. A world of their own, a refuge, something where adults can't even go, something on their own scale, so in neither borderless nor limitless, which refers to a dreamlike universe.

We are given a giant plaque to make a tiny little hut that opens onto a giant world. Children are neither mawkish nor pastel, they are neither sanitized nor formatted, they are raw jewels, they are violent, they are wicked, they are merciless, they are wild, they are real, they are sublime, they are excessive, they shit, they pee, they laugh, they cry, they love without restraint, above all, they are naive, in a new sense, they are beautiful!

Our relationship with the built environment must be more emotional than functional, it must restore our landmarks blurred by the virtual. Is there a clearer trace than that left by a colour, a flavour, a sound? Children must be allowed to dream, dreams are the very essence of reality. It is our only weapon, the most powerful, the most effective to free ourselves from the dullness and ugliness of the contingencies that assail us from all sides.

There is no longer any preconceived or supposedly archetypal form, there is no more inside and outside, no more light of darkness, no borders, no limits, there is practically nothing left. Just a plate, pierced with holes into which a white paper handkerchief can be slipped. Vertical, it's a screen, a brown front, a cozy back, a simple, modest line to preserve one's intimacy. Horizontally, the immaculate plate becomes a territory on which one feels like doing delicate and soft things, or tearing off everything to blow one's nose. Let that be the case. I'm not the one making the story, and that's fine.

Matthieu Poitevin