Benjamin Barber

Lecture: If Mayors Ruled the World: City, Metro Region & Province – What is the appropriate level of Urban Governance?

Francis Soler set up his private practice in 1985. Its activities are extremely vari: City, Metro Region & Province – What is the appropriate level of Urban Governance?ed: from facilities to housing and from studies to urban development. The office takes part in major competitions for public projects both in France and abroad and in consultations by invitation. As much attention is given to small but remarkable buildings, such as public housing in Rue Emile Durkheim (Paris/Delivery in 1997), and in Clichy (delivery in 2001), layouts, and facilities, as to high prestige works, such as grandstand for 14 July celebrations (under François Mitterrand mandates), International conference centre (aborted project), Ministry of Culture (delivery in 2005), OCO / “Coeur d’Orly”, big urban airport project and Philharmonics of Paris (competitions).
In 2009, he participated in the elaboration of Vasconi report, ordered by Minister of Ecology Jean-Louis Borloo about environmental challenge and the discussion about placing architecture under supervision of this ministry and not Ministry of Culture.
His big project of Research and Development Centre for EDF (French Electricity) is actually under construction (delivery is scheduled in 2015). His private housing project for VINCI, in Zac Cardinet (Paris) is also under construction (delivery by 2015). The construction of his big public housing projects, in Porte d’Auteuil (Paris) with Anne Demians, Rudy Ricciotti and Finn Geipel architects is scheduled to begin in mid-2014. Executive studies for the construction of the huge bridge over the Arno River Florence, (Italy) are almost achieved and approved, construction being scheduled by the end of 2014.
The aim is to give them all an important role in the city, to make them into art works. Whatever the project is, Francis Soler’s priorities are to propose pertinent responses to the complex problems of old and new cities, and to give real pleasure to users and residents by offering them architecture that is an art of usage.

Benjamin R. Barber is a Senior Research Scholar at The Center on Philanthropy and Civil Society of The Graduate Center, The City University of New York, President and Founder of the Interdependence Movement, and Walt Whitman Professor of Political Science Emeritus, Rutgers University. An internationally renowned political theorist, Dr. Barber brings an abiding concern for democracy and citizenship to issues of politics, globalization, culture and education in America and abroad. He consults regularly with political and civic leaders in the U.S. (President Clinton, Howard Dean) and around the world (Germany, U.K., Italy).

Benjamin Barber’s 17 books include the classic Strong Democracy (1984) reissued in 2004 in a twentieth anniversary edition; the international best-seller Jihad vs. McWorld (1995 with a Post 9/11 Edition in 2001, translated into thirty languages) and most recently Consumed: How Markets Corrupt Children, Infantilize Adults, and Swallow Citizens Whole, published by W.W. Norton & Co. in March, 2007 (ten foreign editions). His new book, If Mayors Ruled the World, was published by Yale University Press in 2013, and was the subject of his TED global talk, released in September 2013.

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