Kevin Donovan, Ryan W. Kennihan Architects

The Maison du Peuple (Clichy, 1936-1939) is an exercise in programmatic, material and operational synthesis, providing plural and adaptable spaces for a working-class constituency. The complex requirements of market, auditorium and cinema occupy the same set of spaces sequentially, through the deployment of mobile screens, a stacking floor, collapsible balustrades, a sliding roof and other moving elements. The project is made through assembly: of elements made in thin metal sheet strengthened by a combination of craft and quasi-industrial methods, but also of ideas and groups of invested individuals (architects, fabricators, engineers, clients and users). In these ways, it embodies FREESPACE.
In similar ways, our exhibit also demonstrates FREESPACE characteristics. The space and mobile surfaces, layered with original drawings and photographs of the Maison du Peuple, may be reconfigured at will by visitors, who make walls out of doors and seats out of marble counterweights as they read the information. As the space is remade, new combinations of information are formed, retelling the story in an ever-changing context. The exhibition object, crafted using a combination of artisan and industrial techniques, was assembled and transported to site through an act of collaboration between architects and fabricators.
Kevin Donovan, Ryan W. Kennihan Architects