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Call for candidates for the establishment of a Council for the Atelier International du Greater Paris (AIGP)

1 - Context: The AIGP is renewing at the heart of an emerging very Greater Paris!

2016 offers the unique opportunity to start transforming the AIGP, and adapt its missions and means: the AIGP is indeed being rebuilt precisely when the construction of the Greater Paris is speeding up and the projects & calls for projects are multiplying.

From now on, the Metropolis of Greater Paris is created, the Greater Paris Express project is progressing and housing production has obviously been rekindled. The emerging Greater Paris is now part of the daily horizon. The issues of its fabrication require considering global scales, which are difficult to comprehend (e.g. from Paris to Le Havre), as well as the metropolitan territories. Its works impose visions and images of the future that are still missing, and yet are called for by its inhabitants.

It is necessary for everyone that progress and projects work together in a coherent, visible and global way.

This is where the AIGP can play a leading role. The AIGP is nowadays recognised as holding an important place in France and on the international scale, thanks to its specific capacity to have contractors and clients work hand in hand at the early stages of the planning projects. This capacity to have multidisciplinary teams led by architects question the public authority on major planning options cannot be seen anywhere else on this scale and for that long.

As it opens a new page of its history, the AIGP intends to remain this important place for debate and deeper studies of the metropolitan issues, along with all its partners, for and together with the stakeholders and inhabitants:

• Through its objective: The AIGP is first a driving force and an original vision of international influence. Created in 2010, it carries on the legacy of the 2008 international consultation on the “Grand pari(s) de l’agglomération parisienne” to consider the post-Kyoto future of the French capital city.

This production and the link established between a global vision and a territorial approach that is able to integrate the formal design of possibilities enabled to point out the following:

• The necessity to work on the very large metropolitan scale –beyond the administrative limits– and the one to articulate the levels, from the local project to the global challenge;
• The necessity to start from the existing, the “already there”, with the major ambition of its transformation, and the one to “optimize” the urban reality;
• The necessity to formulate a global strategy of adaptation to the climate challenges;
• The systemic character of this metropolization, which should enable to connect the challenges of mobility to the ones of housing and of diversification of driving forces and economic centres;
• And the awareness that nothing can actually be planned without a shared culture and the involvement of the forces from the territory, beginning with their inhabitants…

The freedom of international architects and urban planners, nurtured by their project experience, has from the start been the condition of the innovation brought by the AIGP and forms its DNA.

• Through its governance: The Administration Board of the AIGP includes representatives of the State as well as of territorial collectivities (to date: Paris Métropole, the Association des Maires d’Ile de France, the City of Paris and the Conseil Régional); this Board is the only place where these institutions can meet to entrust specialists of spatial organisation and urban form with a mission of working in full freedom on a prospective vision of the Greater Paris, and therefore of nurturing the public debate. The AIGP organizes a reasonable dialogue around these studies and opens the possibility for useful convergence.
• Through the quality of its productions: Since its creation the AIGP has been a breeding ground for innovative ideas, partially carried out through recent projects. Thanks to its multidisciplinary approach –which has always been wished for– it simultaneously evolves on different spatial and time scales: from the local project to the large territory, and starting from reality and seeing far ahead.
• Through the originality of its research: a “global metropolis”, an institutional, geographical, political, social… object, still emerging and yet already present in the inhabitants’ daily lives and fantasies.

This is how the AIGP enhances the reputation of the Greater Paris worldwide.

To continue its mission the AIGP will rely on a new Council –the creation of which is the object of this call for candidates– which should meet the following expectations:

• Architects, urban planners and spatial organisation specialists as well as public figures from other disciplines will form a Council of approximately 20 members for the AIGP. They will shed new light to nurture a prospective approach and a spatial vision on the larger scale so that the Greater Paris does not merely end up as a series of disparate projects.
• The reputation and experience of the future Council of the AIGP as well as the participation of public figures from all over the world will allow confronting the visions and experiences of the metropolises under construction, and making the Greater Paris exert an international influence.
• The AIGP will facilitate exchange among all the stakeholders strengthening partnerships on the scale of the Greater Paris.
• There will be an amplified publication of the overall work through renewed and accessible communication tools. The work will be largely published and available to the inhabitants and to all the stakeholders. The recurring debates will adapt to the diversity of the publics and include it into collaborative processes.

2 – Definition of the Council of the AIGP

The members of the Council are expected to have high interpellation skills on the emergence of a metropolis without strict geographical borders, to be willing to provide ambitious and unexpected solutions, and to use critical vigilance on the debated solutions.

This work shall be done on behalf of the big institutions, which are responsible for the strategic reflection and the implementation of the projects, as well as of the citizens, who are willing to understand and follow the current arbitrations.

Role and Missions

The Council of the AIGP is a high-level international arena for debate as well as a marketplace of original ideas on the Greater Paris.

It provides a prospective and strategic vision derived from the collective eye of its composing public figures. It holds high the visionary spirit of the AIGP and ensures the reflections produced remain coherent.

It can take up any subject with respect to the object of the Atelier international du Greater Paris; this ability ensures the creativity and originality of this unique place for reflection.

The Administration Board may bring a submission before the Council, which then issues advice and contributions on the major metropolitan issues.

It publicly represents the AIGP.

It problematizes the issues and can propose topics for the working program adopted by the Administration Board.

Composition and Working Method

The Council of the AIGP includes 20 public figures, who sit intuitu personæ. It is international and multidisciplinary.

• It develops its own internal regulations;
• It can create working groups of smaller capacity on specific subjects and open to external expertise;
• It provides notes in plenary session of the Council, to be used for external publication;
• It is the scientific coordinator of international open workshops/seminars of several days, and produces contributions on the current activities of the Greater Paris or the world’s metropolises;
• The Administration Board may require the Council members to represent the AIGP during missions in conferences and events;
• It meets in plenary session at least three times per year. During these sessions, the members of the Council of the AIGP:
  • Give an opinion on the current metropolitan issues;
  • Contribute to the development of the AIGP annual work program;
  • Evaluate the works received.
• It also meets at least once per year with all the GIP members – the Administration Board and the General Assembly, the Europan and POPSU programs and the AIGP permanent staff.
• It relies on the permanent staff for the coordination, valorisation and distribution of the work. This staff issues the calls for tender after the Council of the AIGP has problematized the issues and the Administration Board has set the expectations (duration of the works, format of the submissions, places and formats of the intermediate restitutions…). The staff supports the redaction and circulation of the notes and works of the Council of the AIGP. It summons the participants to each plenary session of the restricted group, and is responsible for the organisation of the seminars, the preparation of the reports and the formatting of the public recommendations, minutes… It ensures the works are distributed and debated.

Financial Regime

The participation to public events organised by the AIGP is not remunerated.

In the conditions fixed by the Administration Board:

- The members of the Council receive compensation for their engagement (participation to the working groups, workshops/seminars, evaluation of research projects…);

- The travel and accommodation costs necessary for their participation are covered by the GIP.

Terms of Office

The members of the Council of the AIGP are appointed for 4 years from the day the Administration Board of the AIGP appoints them; the judgement of the Administration Board is final.

Unjustified non-attendance to 3 successive plenary sessions authorizes the Administration Board to call for replacement of the member concerned.

3 – Application Process

The application form (of maximum 10 to 20 pages) shall include the following elements:

• A simplified curriculum vitae, with the candidate’s main references;
• A motivation letter;
• A record of competencies, which can be mobilised for the metropolitan construction in France and worldwide;
• A presentation on the challenges for the continuation of the metropolitan construction at the scale of the Greater Paris;
• A description of the input this candidate can bring to the Council, as well as of the way he/she sees his/her involvement.

The strict closing date for applications is fixed on September 15^th, 2016, at 12:00 (Paris time), email date to be used as evidence.

Applications to be sent:

• By email to A receipt confirmation shall be sent to the candidate within 24h of receipt.
• And by mail: Atelier international du Greater Paris, Palais de Tokyo
  13 avenue du Président Wilson, 75116 Paris.

A receipt confirmation shall be sent to all the candidates within hours of receipt of the dematerialised file.

The Administration Board of the GIP will study the application in September 2016 and decide on the composition of the Council of the AIGP. The candidates shall be kept informed within 8 days of deliberation and receive a mail and an email on the outcome of their application.

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Paris, July 7, 2016