Parabole project, urban plateform.
Un été au Havre 2017.
www.uneteauhavre2017.fr
Contracting body : GIP Le Havre.
Artistic direction : Jean Blaise.
Executive production : Artevia.
Execution : ArtComposite and Legendre Génie Civil.
Location : Pré-Fleuri, Caucriauville.
Completion spring 2017

A platform for life and for communication. The Parabole – or dish – is an installation evoking the telecommunications devices found around the heights of Le Havre, on the rooftops, façades, pylons and hilltops. A modern feature necessary to long-distance telecommunications, the Parabole is anchored at Caucriauville, one of the city’s summits, and paradoxically reinstates a direct, physical, local approach to communication.

It is a low-tech, almost primitive wooden structure, contrasting with the high-tech design of the usual technology devices. It revives the earliest ways of communicating – face-to-face, using words and speech. Its concentric, radiating form is a catalyst for human communication, connecting visitors, getting them to socialize, here and now, in this gathering place.
You can sit on it, lie down on it, picnic on it, take a nap on it, climb on it, or simply meet people for a chat while you watch over the city, the estuary and the sea. Its generous dimensions and tilted position invite shared, multiple ownership.

It encourages anyone who climbs aboard to shift their position, altering their connection with others and with the landscape. It looks outwards over the horizon and up to the sky, urging us to share our perception of the city and its future, as somewhere we can project ourselves.
Its form echoes the circular bowl shape of Niemeyer’s Le Volcan. An invitation to go along there?

Concrete raft.
Wood structure, glue laminated douglas.
Wood deck, douglas.
Grassed slope.

15 x 2,10 m.