Poster de présentation "A journey through temporal complexities"

"It may be surprising for an architect, who specializes in the shaping of Space, to take an interest in the question of the nature of Time. Yet the city is fundamentaly defined by four types of relations to Time, or temporalities : the time of history, anchored in the memories of the past; the time of changes of a city, in between past, present and future; the time of making, that of the city’s stakeholders; and the instantaneous time of everyday life, unique to each of us.

My research on the contemporary train station led me to question the temporal complexities induced by mobility policies on the station, its neighborhood and the networks on which it connects. Hence, clocked time, scheduling arrival and departure of trains, metros, tramways and buses, governs the experience and characterize the pace, speed and configuration of the passing through the station. But this is not the only relation to time that stations produce in terms of mobility.

The notion of time can also refer to a “distance of time”. It is an equivalent of space modulo a given speed, one that is homogeneous, measurable, and cumulative. Light-years are a good example, and so are the high-speed-train-hours or the walking-minutes to measure distances through time. This “distance of time” also has the characteristic of being empty of content. It is less a moment of time than a waste of time. Therefore, the only way to gain it is to reduce it, by increasing speed.

Yet another form of time may come into play: the “matter of time”. That time is by definition experienced, complex, plastic, partially subjective, sensitive, even emotional, and cultural in any case. A time charged with affect. In Ancient Greece, philosophers opposed the kairos – “moment of time, opportunity” that gave this qualitative acceptance of time – to the chonos – the measured, chronological time that unfolds inexorably.

It is th0se different facets that we will address when questioning the nature of time, through the prism of its multiple relations with the city and mobilities."