Les Passagers, Cité du Refuge, Paris 2010

The Cité du Refuge is a Salvation Army social reintegration and accommodation center, built by Le Corbusier in the 1930s. It has welcomed thousands of people since its opening.

Today, with the development of the ‘Paris Rive Gauche’ urban development zone, we are witnessing a change in the urban landscape of the neighborhood and the arrival of a new population. It seemed important to us to preserve the memory of these places in order to share it with the newcomers. From the urban fringe where it was previously located, the Cité du Refuge is now at the center of the district, a strategic position to bear witness, through these stories, to the richness and diversity of human journeys that have passed through this space for 75 years. It seemed important to us to collect and work on the memory of these places in order to transmit it to newcomers and to make it a basis for exchange with them. This is the objective of ‘Les Passagers’. Its principle is simple: to collect, through testimony and images, a trace of the people who have populated and still populate this part of the 13^th arrondissement of Paris, then to connect these stories and images by assembling them into a portrait-landscape for dissemination, via the Net, to the entire planet.

‘Les Passagers’ is about supporting the ‘project’ of transformation and integration carried out daily by the Centre Espoir teams.

‘Les Passagers’ aims to foster connections between the Cité du Refuge and the surrounding neighborhood, and to facilitate communication between the Passagers and the City.

‘Les Passagers’ is a public event staged in the city and on the Internet where diverse human journeys intersect.

‘Les Passagers’, with the ‘modulotaure’ (inspired by Le Corbusier’s Modulor and Picasso’s Bull’s Head version), represents the transition from the reconstruction of intimate space, which the Cité du Refuge is dedicated to, to the construction of public space currently underway within the ZAC.

‘Les Passagers’ is a website designed to change and evolve over time. The permanent updating of stories and photos creates a constantly evolving portrait-landscape of the Cité du Refuge and the surrounding neighborhood.

This project received model assistance from DICRéAM. Thanks to Alexis Amen and Piloti, Benjamin, Stéphane, Humberto, Gérard Parésys, the team and residents of the Cité du Refuge.