Category: Projects

The Bureau des guides is the association that brings together walkers, artists, producers, architects and animators associated with the GR2013. We offer you multiple ways to walk away from the metropolitan trail, in order to observe, perceive and know better what surrounds us.
The Bureau des guides continues to journey, to invent and recreate itself, in collaboration with local cultural groups, educational and research establishments, local authorities and groups of inhabitants. In inviting you to venture from the GR2013, the Bureau des guides further enriches the trail, collecting stories, creating new communities and learning how we might inhabit our territory together.

Foresta

Foresta, a collective process within a future metropolitan park north of Marseille.

Foresta designates a possible future metropolitan park in the former tile basin of Séon north of Marseille, in what has today become the green belt of Grand Littoral.These 20 hectares represent an unusual green space in Marseille, simultaneously in its size but also in its unique history. Terraces of clay, vines then tiles, this part of the imposing domain of the Foresta family has been for fifteen years an open space, almost abandoned.

The GR2013 has chosen to trace its path in this remarkable landscape, marking the first public pedestrian route in this legally private space.

For several years, the Yes we camp collective, the Hôtel du Nord cooperative, the Résiliance company, alongside the GR2013 Bureau des guides and many local associations have been sharing experiences through walking, and slowly developing what could be a future metropolitan park: as both a place of life, of heritage, cultural and sporting practices, but also a tool for urban agriculture and local production.

The GR2013 Bureau des guides contribute to an exploration of the landscape, experiments within an metropolitan environment, engaging in discussions that involve builders and residents, around the construction of an urban refuge on the site.

What’s going on in Foresta?

Pamparigouste expedition

In 2015, the reissue of the Michelin road atlas forgot to include the blue water table of the Etang de Berre. The largest saltwater lake in Europe – 75 km of coastline, a 155 km2 lagoon and 980 million m3 of water – disappeared from the map.

In 2018, a wet spring brought enormous inflows of fresh water causing a phenomenal “phytoplankton bloom” which, associated with very high temperatures and an absence of mistral winds during the summer, created one of the most serious anoxic crises in the region. This particularly disturbing event is part of the long history of this highly industrialized territory, alerting us to the current fragility of its ecosystems.

In 2019, an expedition led by the Bureau des Guides, with a crew made up of artists, scientists and lagoon inhabitants, sets out to discover this inland sea. After sailing from Marseille, their ship ventures into the Caronte channel to re-invent a territory based on its coasts and shores.

A poetic and scientific exploration begins…

PAMPARIGOUSTE, is a metropolitan expedition supported by the FNADT, the South Region, the European project Nature 4 City Life, the Department of Bouches-du-Rhône, Les Parallèles du Sud de Manifesta 13, the Fondation de France, the municipalities of Martigues, Miramas, Saint-Chamas, Istres, Vitrolles and Berre-l’Étang. In coproduction with gmem-CNCM-marseille, Center National de Création Musicale de Marseille | ENSA • M. In partnership with Opéra Mundi, the TARA Oceans Foundation, the GIPREB, the eco-citizen institute of Fos, the LPED (Aix Marseille University), the Park of the former powder factory of St Chamas (SIANPOU), Yes we camp, the nautical bases and sailing clubs as well as the associations bordering the pond (ESSV, Batolab, LPO, ADMR, Étang Now, Nosta Mar, etc.).

GR2013 hospitalities

Arrangements and installations linked to uses and places, under the sign of conviviality and hospitality.

The GR2013 develops its hospitality with the hikers who pass through it, the municipalities it crosses, and the inhabitants who live nearby.

The “GR2013 Hospitalities” bring together projects that associate walking with the construction of welcoming and observation facilities. Carried out with collectives of artist-builders and architects, they offer interventions linked to the uses and places, as spaces for conviviality and gatherings, or as public and poetic installations.

From the detailed development of the trail, to the invention of new accommodation practices, the GR2013 develops through the encounters and interactions it stimulates.

Le Rocher is the first construction of this program in the various departmental parks. Les Pépites, the second hospitality unit, is being developed as the Barasse hospitality team begins the investigation.

Showcase of the trail

An exhibition space

Just like the GR, where the GR2013 trail is indicated by its markers, the Bureau des guides is indicated in Marseille by its window.

In a sympathetic nod to Paul Ruat – the founder of the Marseille excursionists of the 19th century who placed in the window of his bookstore a slate announcing the next walk outings – the window is both an invitation to travel and a place of hospitality where one is able to tell stories.

A series of exhibitions is presented in response to the program of the Bureau des guides and reminds us that this trail exists not only on this legendary street, but also throughout the metropolitan area.

Inaugurated at the end of 2017, the Vitrine du Sentier located at 152 Canebière hosts exhibitions that tell the story of the GR2013 territories, it is supported by the Department of Bouches du Rhône as part of the revitalization of central Marseille.

Metropolitan trails academy

Cycle of meetings and tools to learn about trails …

The Metropolitan Trails Academy is both a tool and an innovative practice for rediscovering our inhabited territories and redefining their political geographies. The Metropolitan Trails Academy is an educational project that provides avenues for building metropolitan trails and in reading metropolises. The establishment of a metropolitan path goes hand in hand with the establishment of “local educational communities” (on the model of the heritage communities of Faro). Within these communities, a civic practice of sharing knowledge and sharing expertise takes place on the ground: in walking together, through the production of a charter, a guide and MOOCs (translated into 6 languages ), 6 structures provide knowledge to define a common structure that allows new project leaders to develop their own practice, to design a project and to work both with communities and with civil society (artists, associations). These 6 structures are based on a complex interplay of skills and experiences, both technical, human and relational.

Birth of an urban school

Between town planning, ecology, tourism and contemporary art, the Metropolitan Paths are urban facilities that renew our representations of, and everyday practices, of the contemporary city. The Metropolitan Paths are open platforms for continuing education in the city in all its aspects. Wishing to share their know-how, several creators of Sentiers Métropolitains d’Europe have come together to found the Académie des Sentiers Métropolitains, which in 2021 published a charter, a methodological guide and a Mooc.

Discover the MOOC

The Academy was designed at the end of the General Assembly of Metropolitan Trails, held at the Mucem in December 2017, during the inauguration of the Metropolitan Trails Showcase. It is coordinated by Metropolitan Trails, with PathsOfGreece, Trekking Italia, Büro für Städtereisen, urbanegestalt, Le Bureau des guides du GR2013 and Mucem. A project co-financed by the Erasmus + agency of the European Union as part of an educational program for adults.

Photographic inventory

THE INVENTORY brings together a wide selection of photographic works carried out in the Bouches-du-Rhône metropolitan area since the 1980s. It now brings together nearly 60 photographers and more than 5,000 images. This unprecedented gathering of photographic works aims to be exhibited online to present side by side series of images that reveal, by traversing them, these territories swept by the same wind.

The project designed for the Manifesta 13 biennial includes the inauguration of the collective and virtual exhibition of the works, the programming of a series of screenings and presentation of the works by their authors as well as the opening of a workshop for the general public that will offer to manipulate the photographs and build their own collections.

We will return to the field later, to continue these photographic encounters and observe the landscapes that we inhabit.