ISKANDER GUETTA (CH, 1996)
With Tanguy Caversaccio
Residency period: July 2020
This residency allowed us to establish the foundations of our research project ITAP 2084. Switzerland being one of the only countries in the world to maintain the obligation to build civil protection shelters, this first step was an opportunity to address the historical and sociological aspect of this policy. We tried to understand how such an ideology of protection was put in place and which factors fostered the emergence of such a great deployment of energy in Switzerland. Through our research, we were surprised to see the importance of these shelters and the discourse surrounding them in the national narrative as well as in the image that Switzerland constructs for itself internationally. Understanding this sociological aspect seemed essential in the process of reinterpreting these spaces.
La Becque enabled us to carry out this key stage that will allow us to deconstruct the myth that surrounds them and that justifies their construction in order to offer new scenarios of use and governance. In addition to this sociological research, we tried to gather as much data as possible about these shelters, documenting all the typologies, norms, construction instructions and objects that are present in them. Through graphical tests and several interviews, we have built up a vast information base that will allow us to move forward to the next steps of this project. — Iskander Guetta & Tanguy Caversaccio
Iskander Guetta graduated from ECAL in Industrial Design. He explored the reception and housing conditions of homeless people with his diploma project ABRI+, a finalist at the Swiss Design Awards 2019. He then undertook a trip to Morocco and an internship at the SELCO Foundation in Bangalore (IND) to explore design practices outside the neo-liberal context of the West. This allowed him to gain a better understanding of design in the Global South, and a better perception the intersecting issues of ecology and decolonization, which he tends to bring to bear in his practice.