The Les Fougères area at Grand-Charmont, near Montbéliard, has been restructured, renovated, and rebuilt. It has changed and has a completely new identity.
From May-June 2010, this process of metamorphosis concluded with the demolition of a long tower block. An intense moment, the finishing touch of Les Fougères’ transformation.
An open air cafe had been put up behind the block that was going to be demolished.
— An open air cafe with a panoramic terrasse when the view is totally blocked by this long building ? What an extravagant idea ! There is nothing to see !
And yet this was Jakob Gautel’s proposal for the artis’cité programme.
This open air cafe, or, as it might be called in more fashionable terms, lounge bar, is called Point of View, which was also the name for the whole event Jakob proposed in Grand-Charmont.
This last tower block was demolished little by little throughout May 2010. We wanted to « put on stage » this slow disappearance with a panoramic bar, which, in the beginning, had no view at all (in French « il n’a point de vue »), but for which the view was progressively to be opened. A new point of view was born.
For a whole week, different actors and associations of Les Fougères had been animating the café, giving life to this strange and somewhat misfitting place, while the demolition engines working in the background were slowly pulling the curtain. An opportunity to relive memories related to the building and to say Good Bye.
A series of 17 postcards about this event has been edited to show different points of view of this important moment of transformation of the area.
(In German, a “post card” is called an “Ansichtskarte”, which means litterally a “point of view card”. Point of view has a double meaning : the place from which we look at something, or the opinion we have about something.)
Special thanks to Maxime Fraissinet for his precious assistance.
Photos : Céline Babey, Marie Blossier, Jean-Marie Boizeau, Maxime Fraissinet, Jakob Gautel, Aurélie Goetz and by inhabitants of the Les Fougères area.