User:Emile Schmidt/sandbox

UP3
UP3 is an experimental school of architecture created in Versailles in 1969 by a group of architects and artists who opposed the accepted ‘Beaux-Arts' system. It was created in 1969 and replaced in 2005. Its first director was Jean-Pierre Biron. Despite its brief existence, it gave rise to an inventive and unusual generation of architects.

Creation and Objectives
Rising out of the 1968 cultural revolts, UP3 was created with the purpose to offer an alternative to the ‘Beaux-Arts’ system, which was grounded mostly in representative, classical and fashionable architectural style. Instead, the teachers wanted to focus on the genuine experience of space – what they thought was the proper essence of architecture - and its physical, cultural and emotional implications.

Teaching
In this respect, the syllabus incorporated several insights into social sciences and philosophy e.g. sociology, semiotics or history. The teaching corpse was composed of strong, influential and diverse characters that aimed first and foremost to provoke deep emotional responses.

Amongst the teachers were:


 * René Duvillier, surrealist painter, part of the new School of Paris
 * Olivier Girard, architect and son of a psychoanalyst, ex director of AMC, husband and associate of Edith Girard
 * Henri Gaudin, renowned architect
 * Patrick Germe, renowned theoretician, specialized in the nurturing of creative obsessions
 * Jean-Marie Floch, researcher for the CNRS, semiotician at Ipsos, the student of Greimas, teacher at the EHESS (Ecole des Hautes Etudes de Sciences Sociales), and expert in the semiotics of space
 * Bernard Charrue, engineer
 * Jean-Charles Depaule, city sociologist

Located in the wealthy suburbs of Paris, UP3 aimed to turn the youths into genuine creators and original thinkers by tearing down cultural assumptions and rubbing off the leftovers of classical education. The first two years would follow Duvillier and Girard’s artistic impulsion, in the footsteps of the surrealist method until, comes the end of the spiritual journey, one was able to freely express its internal passions. The following years were used to mold the underlying primal content with a constant concern of avoiding conventional representative schemes.

UP3 also had connections with the United States as it had a partnership with the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, part of the Chicago School. In later years however, UP3 was progressively standardized; it became in 2005 Ecole d’Architecture de Versailles, then Ecole Nationale Superieure d’Architecture de Versailles in 2009.