laboratoire écologie et art pour une société en transition
Devenirs buissons
Devenirs buissons is a co-creative artistic initiative that aims to strengthen social cohesion by inventing sensitive and inclusive frameworks that promote a sense of belonging and community living.
The Buissonnets site in Versoix (GE) is an urban wasteland, a space located between residential villas and social housing. This area, where different social realities coexist, constitutes what the book La Ville relationnelle calls a space of programmatic freedom, a fallow place conducive to experimenting with new ways of living together.
Devenirs buissons proposes to activate this place collectively and symbolically, through forms of visual art and temporary architecture carried out in collaboration with residents, associations, institutions, and researchers from various disciplines. Through their unique and poetic forms, these interventions seek to spark narratives, uses, and imaginations that could not blossom in the shadow of large-scale traditional urban development programs.
The wasteland becomes a third place, a welcoming intermediate space, located between home and work, where informal social ties can be re-established. This type of socially fertile environment helps to produce “creative germinations” — new forms of cohabitation, shared governance, and conviviality.
Through art and situated practices, Devenirs buissons asserts that the “right to the city” is also a right to imagination, a right to dream, invent, and re-enchant the places we inhabit.
What we’ve done
In 2025, the co-creative teams made several visits with artists and architects to the site during different seasons to explore it and share their intentions and wishes for the continuation of the project.
What we’re doing
The first phase of the project takes the form of research residencies in Versoix, where artists immerse themselves in the local reality to lay the sensory, social, and conceptual foundations for co-creation.
They are accompanied by architects and meet with various specialists (biologists, botanists, historians, archivists, local actors), while forging links with residents.
The team thus enriches its understanding of the local context through social, political, and anthropological readings: migration, urban transformation, diversity, memories of places, and conflicts.
What’s next
Between August and September 2026, artists will spend five weeks in Versoix developing their projects in collaboration with local residents and partners. The Buissonnets site will become a venue for workshops, meetings, and artistic experimentation.
The final week will feature public and festive presentations, transforming this site, once perceived as empty, into a space imbued with collective memories and new urban meanings. As a testing ground for alternative approaches to urban development, it will become a repository for memories in the making, shared emotions, and renewed meanings.
transdisciplinary team
Giulia Angrisani – anthropologue
Canedicoda – artist
Marion Zurbach – artist
Carla Demierre - author
Collectif PromeNOODology – architects
Françoise Dubosson - historian
Laurence Crémel – landscape architect (HEPIA – Paysage projet vivant)
Dieter Dietz et Léonore Nemec – architects (EPFL – Architecture Land Initiative)
Laurent de Wurstemberger et Rodrigo Fernandez – architects (HEIA Fribourg – Terrabloc)