RANDOM NOTES FOR A NECESSARY URBAN PLANNING

(2018)

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In the biennium 1917-1918 the French government entrusted an Italian engineer, Fernand Jacopozzi the construction of a city named 'Faux Paris' or 'Sham Paris' ('Fake Paris'). Making it a French capital's clone on a 1:1 scale, it was supposed to mislead pilots of the Reich during possible raids.

Close to the town Maisons-Laffitte Seine describes a loop similar to the one in Paris. Three areas in the north, north-east and north-west of the metropolis were chosen to complete the plan.

The project starts from this anecdote to reflect on the question of the increasingly blurred border between reality and its representation. As well as the processes we are witnessing today: the transformation of cities into museums but also the contamination of information, politics and culture, by logic and aesthetic of the spectacle and the spectacular.

I’m interested in the connections between the past and the present, seeking and re- situating micro-stories from the past on the table, like cleats that would make it possible to understand the meaning of the puzzle that is now emerging.
I visited the Parisian libraries and archives, surveying and photographing the real city, with in mind the drawings and plans of his replica and the documents collected on the war and its impact.

Apart from its pure anecdotal character, there is nothing left from the replicant Paris nowadays. These places though, establish a privileged point of view allowing 'the interpretation of some phenomena from a unique perspective', feeling historical and psychological connections that tie the past to our present.