Bellastock Festival

Promoting Learning by Doing

Every year for the past 17 years, the Bellastock Festival has invited 400 participants to take over the CAAPP—the Centre de l’Art, de l’Architecture, du Paysage et du Patrimoine (Center for Art, Architecture, Landscape, and Heritage)—in Evry, just outside of Paris, a place for conceiving and experimenting construction processes in view of creating more innovative and eco-friendly cities.

The aim of the festival is to design, build, and occupy a temporary city on a 1:1 scale over four days. The underlying idea is to promote learning by doing, using resources that are to hand and sharing the skills that everyone brings to the table.

To achieve this, participants are supplied with bio-based, geo-based, and recycled materials to design and build the accommodation where they will live and sleep during the festival days. This team effort offers an opportunity to experiment setting up a collective initiative while tackling the concrete challenges of full-scale construction.