Urban planning, a vector of transitions

The Urban Planning Grand Prix is awarded each year under the patronage of the minister responsible for urban planning. The jury is made up of around fifteen representatives and stakeholders in the city: elected officials, professionals, planners, researchers and qualified individuals, at least two of whom are active abroad. In 2022, to enrich the panel of selected urban planners and to inform the jury's debates, seven profiles were selected and asked to submit a scientific autobiography, which served as the basis for selecting the winner.

At the end of the jury's deliberations, Franck Boutté was named winner of the 2022 Grand Prix de l'Urbanisme for his multidisciplinary contribution to the urban discipline.

This nomination gave rise to the book L'urbanisme, vecteur de transitions (Urban Planning, a Vector of Transition). It presents the work of Atelier Franck Boutté through 12 explorations. These explore the different fields of thought and action that the Atelier brings to its various projects. These explorations are both conceptual approaches and open questions, woven with certainties acquired through experience but also with challenges to be met. Between know-how and a bet on the future, foundations at the heart of an evolving collective, constant adaptation to new project contexts and avenues to explore, these explorations offer themselves as an enlightening framework for understanding the production of the Atelier.

An engineer trained in architecture, Franck Boutté is one of those who consider the environment to be an integral part of development processes. It is primarily for this reason, and in recognition of the quality of his work on iconic projects such as those on the Île de Nantes, the Moroccan cities and neighborhoods of Anfa and Zenata - with Bernard Reichen - and Bordeaux Euratlantique, that the jury of the Grand Prix de l'Urbanisme has chosen him as the 2022 winner.

But this choice is also due to the originality of its approach, which combines the rigor of the scientific method with the flexibility of adaptation to territorial contexts. Drawing on the former, he identifies the ecological specificity and energy profile of territories at a very early stage through a matrix approach that guarantees coherence between scales. As for the latter, it takes shape in the form of negotiated and co-constructed urban planning, mindful of uses, based on the principle of mutualization - including energy - at the origin of new urban and territorial reciprocity.

This work, guided by a constant search for resilience, sobriety and ways to protect cities from global warming, enters into dialogue with that of the six personalities and collectives selected this year: Dominique Alba, Nicolas Détrie, Sébastien Marot, Claire Schorter, Simon Teyssou and TVK (Pierre Alain Trévelo and Antoine Viger-Kohler). Six strong voices, each in their own way, promoting desirable transitions, for a Grand Prix which, year after year, explores the facets of a professional world increasingly resistant to standardization.