L’archipel Butor. Une régénération, par la culture, d’un village soumis à la métropolisation genevoise

Abstract

Regeneration, as usually presented, implies economic death. Lucinges, a village located in the French Genevese, does not have this characteristic, its regeneration started from a substratum of cultural death. Geneva concentrates all forms of urban culture and thus by its metropolitan size, sterilizes all cultural development on its outlying territories. The functional approach crushes the initial rural culture, engaging Lucinges in a trivialisation’s process. The municipality decided to get out of this standardisation by creating a strong cultural venue which would unite inhabitants and structure the elected official decisions. Michel Butor’s put forward by his donation to the town is became the village’s new cultural identity, bringing coherence to speeches and projects. The school, the library, the mansion, the Butor house will reshape the town center geography and history. They participate in a strong symbolic representation of the territory forming the Butor Archipelago. The desire to inscribe Lucinges in its modern time, without giving up the génie du lieu, allows the implantation of contemporary architecture as an expression of the local project. It is not a marketing process. These remarkable circumstances, allow an architect to work in a village center through successive projects. The successive additions are an opportunity to materialize a though about contemporary architecture as a regeneration of an identity. It is the set of gradually constituted logics which connects the projects with an unwritten rule. The criticism of previous achievements feeds the global thought for future projects. The emergence of those islands reveals the archipelago.