Architecture, Urban Space and Water Flows in Mediterranean Metropolises
Marseille and Athens
Aix-Marseille develops an architectural and anthropological analysis of the relationships between human mobility, hydraulic infrastructures, and urban forms in Mediterranean metropolises, based on a comparative study of Marseille and Athens. In Marseille, the point of departure for this investigation is the analysis of the photographic archive produced by Pierre Gallocher in the 1960s and 1970s, documenting the presence of now-disappeared industrial sites and shantytowns within the urban fabric. This corpus constitutes a central resource for the elaboration of a new—or “crypto”—topography of the city, grounded in the interrelations between urban waterways, industrial geography, and working-class history. Long marginalised within dominant urban narratives, these photographs make it possible to reconstruct structural continuities between hydraulic environments, industrial settlement, precarious forms of housing, and migratory dynamics.
Building on this material, the project engages in dialogue with complementary partnerships from Marseille’s civil society: Ancrages, an association led by Samia Chabani, whose work on migratory memories and social histories makes it possible to situate the trajectories of subaltern populations within a broader framework, connecting human circulation, urban policies, and processes of spatial marginalisation; as well as Mikaëla Le Meur, a research anthropologist, and Geoffroy Mathieu, a photographer, members of Les Gammares, an association that investigates the dynamics of the Caravelle–Aygalades stream and, more broadly, Marseille’s urban aquatic environments, by combining visual archives, field explorations, residents’ knowledge, scientific approaches, and citizen-led practices focused on rivers, canals, and wetland areas that are often rendered invisible or buried.
Together, these materials and partnerships render legible the continuities between environment, industrialisation, migration, and the production of urban inequalities. This in-depth study of Marseille’s spaces will be extended through a comparative perspective on the rivers of Athens, within a project initiated by the photographer Sylvain Maestraggi, allowing the analysis to be pursued in relation to the contemporary urban challenges faced by major Mediterranean metropolises, including soil sealing, land pressure, and the effects of climate change.
Researchers: Giulia Buffoli, Marc Bernardot, Pierre Sintès
Team and Partners: Ancrages Association (Samia Chabani), Mikaëla Le Meur, Geoffroy Mathieu, Sylvain Maestraggi
Keywords: Water infrastructures, Urban inequalities, Visual archives
