Michel Mottez designed Évry-Courcouronnes as a new town in the 1970s. The idea was to relieve congestion in Paris by creating “small capitals” with a high level of amenities and services: universities, theaters, department stores, all embodying the promise of a more modern, comfortable, and practical way of life. With the rise of the automobile, the separation of pedestrian and vehicular traffic became a dominant planning principle, leading to the creation of layered urban spaces. The city center of Évry-Courcouronnes is emblematic of this approach: cars below, pedestrians above, connected by a network of decks, footbridges, and stairways designed to ensure safety and convenience.

Fifty years later, this utopian vision of a three-dimensional city has revealed its limitations, and the municipality has decided to rethink the city center through a major urban redevelopment project scheduled for completion in the coming years.

To prefigure this transformation and improve the city center in the meantime, the City and Grand Paris Sud commissioned Studio 5•5 to develop a temporary urbanism project.

Three initiatives emerged from this project: a collection of urban furniture, an exhibition device in the public realm, and a new pedestrian wayfinding system.

Temporary urbanism is a form of short-term urban planning based on resource efficiency and limited means. Yet it can also contribute in a lasting way to a city’s identity. We therefore questioned what truly constitutes the city’s DNA.

Although the architecture of the new town has revealed certain shortcomings, it remains a strong defining feature and an essential part of its identity, with 16 buildings officially designated as 20th Century Heritage sites.

In the 1990s, the youth of Évry reclaimed the slab-based urbanism ( footbridges, stairways, and street furniture ) transforming the city into the birthplace of a creative discipline: the Art du Déplacement (ADD). Popularized by Yamakasi, it consists of acrobatic movement through the urban environment.

The new furniture designed for Cours Blaise Pascal draws inspiration from this philosophy. Just as the residents of Évry-Courcouronnes repurposed the city’s concrete architecture to invent the Art du Déplacement, we, as designers, repurposed street elements (curbs and concrete blocks) to create a collection of urban sofas and armchairs inspired by domestic furniture.

Extending this idea of inhabiting public space, we created the “Parcours du Cours”: an open-air exhibition system composed of three display walls hosting a cycle of temporary exhibitions. The first showcases the work of Mark Honoré, photographer of the Art du Déplacement.

The third component of the project focuses on signage. The city’s three-dimensional structure, with its multiple levels, makes orientation particularly complex for visitors. We therefore designed a highly visual pedestrian wayfinding system in which buildings are represented graphically rather than simply named, making navigation easier for a cosmopolitan audience.

The ground markings echo the paving patterns of the streets and form functional urban frescoes , a way of addressing practical issues while simultaneously contributing to the city’s identity.

The Évry-Courcouronnes project is part of the broader approach developed by Studio 5•5, which advocates for civic and democratic design through the transformation of public space, a way for the studio to promote accessible, everyday design for all.