Identity

Hybrid Urban Design Agency

Odyssée is a systemic territorial design agency that accompanies its actors - public, private, citizens - in their approaches to complex projects. Our will is to allow a better adaptation of human activity within the living context. The objectives are traced, common to all and in all places: Dietary energy and neutralization of emissions GHGS, Diversification of functions and territorial autonomy to meet local needs, Pooling and circularity of material and immaterial goods and resources.

Discover our actions

Observation

The Planetary System has entered a process of continuous change: the urban fabric is being transformed, the roles of its actors are being questioned, and the major systems - natural, social, urban, economic - that interact are being disrupted. Fluctuation and disruption are becoming the norm, against which our organizations, our patterns, our lifestyles are being challenged to adapt in order to achieve a resilience imperative. It is therefore necessary to rethink the very way we plan.

Signature

Odyssée claims a transversality in reflection (strategic, tactical), scales (space and time), domains and projects (local, global) in order to imagine alternatives outside the framework.
Odyssée hybridizes the skills between the living sciences of the territory and the technical sciences to elaborate novel answers.
Odyssée animates a continuum between project and academic research, as an approach to progress at the service of of the common good.

Approach

Apprehend the project as a fabric of complex interactions to respond to the subtleness of the territory.

To master the techniques (technologies, practices and know-how) and to disseminate their workings, harnessed to social and environmental progress.

Directing projects towards the constitution and enrichment of urban commons as well as the regeneration of fundamental resources and processes.

To put into action citizen’s expertise of use and to reveal the collective intelligence of the territories through the dynamics of the project.

Axiomes

Creativity is the universal expression of nature and its constituents. It is the link that can enable mankind to meet the challenges it faces today. While Innovation, the spearhead of an ideology that places Man above Nature, is an artificial process, subordinating life resources to the benefit of a financial economy without limits. Historically, the innovation process has resulted in hierarchical organizations and a hypercentralization of resources and wealth, to the detriment of the greatest number and the natural system. Inventivity is the intrinsic capacity of man to observe, feel and appreciate in order to design solutions that fit harmoniously into the fundamental processes, enabling him to improve his well-being. The economy is then a virtuous vector of the interactions and exchanges of the natural Global System in which Man acts. Choosing Inventiveness over Innovation is the sine qua non condition for a project approach capable of escaping from frames and dogmas, and building the sustainability of our species on the spaceship Earth.

Systemic design apprehends problems as networks of interactions: It is a holistic approach, marked by the ability to observe, understand, analyze, weave and orchestrate the interactions that influence a territorial system, across scales of space, time, functions and economies. The system is more than the mere sum of its parts. It promotes organizational patterns in distributed and polycentric networks, far from the classical centralized and hierarchical forms. Resilience then consists in the empowerment and solidarity of each point in the network. It aims at activating "network effects" to initiate behavioral, organizational and paradigm changes at all scales. The territorial Systemic aims to integrate the complexity and richness of interactions that exist between natural, urban, economic and social systems at both local and global scales. To these components, it must today add digital systems at equal level. Regenerative Systemic aims to set up the conditions for the renewal and enrichment of fundamental (natural) resources and processes.

Urbanity is "what makes the city the city", a quality measured by the richness of interaction, where architectural, functional and social diversity meet. The urbanity, that ensures the recognition of the other before its knowledge, is no longer the sole property of the physical or tangible urban space, but must also become that of the digital, intangible space, and the synergy of the two.It is a question of building in the dematerialized "place" the conditions necessary for a sustainable and equitable living together through the notion of digital urbanity. It is about increasing the richness of interaction of the dual urban space, through its digital counterpart. In order to elaborate the framework of these digital exchanges that can promote equitable collaboration between actors, the public force must become an orchestrating actor, if not a regulator, so as not to be subjected to the game of "platforming". Here lies the challenge of Digital Sovereignty and the need to adopt the right public strategies based on appropriate infrastructures (tangible and intangible) and skills. The implementation of the notion of digital urbanity requires the definition of a digital citizenship, both as an extension of citizenship to the digital environment, but also as an opportunity for new standards and practices of governance of the territory and its evolutions. Digital urbanity must be an opportunity to tighten the fabric between public authorities and inhabitants, to redistribute powers and responsibilities for action, and to catalyze building and living together for a sustainable future.