During the nineteen sixties and seventies, Malick Sidibé was a busy man. During the day, he spent his time in his studio portraying the people of Bamako. Some evenings, the younger ones, who were discovering the joys of rock and […]

Singapore, february 2017. On your daily journeys, you regularly encounter stairs. In a building, a shopping mall, the subway corridors, a historic building, or even an university campus… Sometimes abrupt and high, sometimes wide and spacious, the steps naturally follow […]

Ferrare, October 2017 Some ceilings of the municipal library were magnificent, remains of a medieval and post-medieval splendor. But the interior of the Palazzo Paradiso attracted less curious tourists than academics, with its collections of rare manuscripts, still accessible on […]

Paris, December 2017. Today I am afraid to show up totally soaked at an interview, so I drop my bicycle and take the subway with you. Do you pay attention to advertisement? A little attention you say. I bet that […]

Berlin, September 2017 Extreme fluidity is one of the things that make finance such a complex world. Well, change is a quintessential quality of the mere idea of investment, the very property that allows value to be created. The price […]

In the South of France, November 2017. The psychiatric hospital is a huge 1900’s building surmounted by a bell tower. Built out of the city town, it now belongs to the vast University clinic that has renamed the district “Hôpitaux-facultés” […]

Berlin, september 2017. Abridged writing, abbreviations, acronyms stand for several words at the same time. Reducing the main thing to a few letters, the inscription is meant to design a precise and circumscribed meaning. But for all that, polysemy is […]

Bologna, october 2017. Once again facing Italian ice cream, a dilemma arises. But here, no question to wonder about 12 different chocolate mixes, only to be sure what of the true nature of the available ice cream. This double entry […]

North Adams, September 2017 In this small western Massachusetts town, the visible brick buildings no longer housed workers or toxic substances. The gigantic rooms of industrial origin had been transformed into halls for a contemporary art museum, blazed by sunlight. […]

We live in a quantified, evidence-based world in which more and more of our actions are framed by indicators and figures that support or evaluate them. Basically, our day-to-day experience increasingly looks like a mix of elementary schools where grades […]

High-speed train in the countryside, September 2017. As often nowdays, access to the train was preceded by a control at the head of the quay, the red lasers scanning the 2D identifiers. The temporarily compact crowd was transformed into authorized […]

Crosswalks are one of these rare semiotic objects that became conventional all over the world. Quite extraordinary when you think about it: an universal meaning some signs do acquire through time. Imagine the circumstances that lead to such a globalized […]

Paris, february 2017.

Paris, march 2017. If streets have been invested with various visual and graphic artefacts for many centuries, the last two decades have been characterized by a proliferation of paintings, posters and ceramics drawings usually attributed to the street art movement. […]

The notion of “script” was coined by Madeleine Akrich to describe the way users, their partners and their environment are inscribed in objects themselves. The de-scription of objects allows notably to understand that competencies are not situated in users’ side […]

Paris, 19 March 2017. The demonstration had just passed, with its cohort of panels, slogans and flags. Behind it, its traces in the public space are quickly erased by the cleaning services, but the most diverse surfaces to accommodate the […]

Singapore, february 2017. In this building of an international company, one has to show her identity card at the entrance booth in order to go a step further. A passeport should work. Yet the desk clerk hesitates, then asks again […]

Singapore, february 2017. The first episode of the recently aired third season of Black Mirror, in which everything and everyone is subject to instant evaluation, is by far the more realistic of the whole show. Likes, stars, hearts, grades: today, […]

Northern Alps, February 2017. Above the cloud sea, the sky is blue and the slopes are not full of people. Obsession of the skiers once the slope is done, the queue to the chairlift remains short in this supposed period […]

Köln, october 2016. It’s Friday afternoon, the train just arrived at the platform, and passengers get off the train. Some are familiar with the station and go directly to the exit, while others meet again some family members or friends. […]

On the first day, we didn’t really pay attention to the sign. We were just surprised to find the door closed and only looked at the dates. She told us she wasn’t taking any vacation this year, maybe she eventually […]

Paris, janvier 2017 The ministry had left the wealthy building of a square full of jewelers for these Parisian margins close to the periphérique. Thus, instead of rooms that seemed to be part of bourgeois apartments, there was a room […]

Paris, may 2013. What is it about? The full restoration of a store and its main window, facing the sidewalk. What the paper is meant to do? Clearly, it’s about “paint”. But we can’t see it. The whole window is […]

It’s been years, now, that we are supposed to live in a paperless world. Since the seventies, and the emergence of affordable and easy-to-use computers, the disappearance of notebooks, single sheets or post-it has been announced again and again. Yet, […]

Paris, November 2016 Urban spaces are paradoxically those of Nature. This Nature is certainly tamed, framed, but nevertheless present, protected and patrimonialised. Thus, until recently, only city authorities were able to plant trees and flower beds and, according to the […]

Paris, november 2016. At the time of internet and collaborative platforms, the sharing of information is multiplied. A large number of persons, distributed all over the world, may circulate an idea, deliver an opinion, or pass a judgment in a […]

Instructions for use are precious documents for who wants to do semiotics. As Madeleine Akrich taught us years ago, they are one of the sites where the crowd the objects are made of is described. Reading them, looking at their […]

Paris, November 2016 The place was cozy with its wooden tables, mismatched chairs and leather armchairs, as we noticed the big homemade everyday cakes on a big corner table. Everything seemed perfect for a work appointment. And then we saw […]

Bayonne, july 2016. Entering the room, you face a huge, multicolored wall, made of numerous components directly screwed on it. A simple glance and you understand how much colors are crucial in the world of climbing. Mostly white, the paint […]

The place was quiet that morning. Even quieter than the rest of the city. You would just hear the birds and the hard wind in the trees. Here and there, benches seemed to wait for visitors, facing the lake, like […]

Barcelona, août 2016 La conférence avait lieu dans le centre des congrès, bâtiment visant la pure fonctionnalité. Salles numérotées, vidéoprojecteurs et écrans à l’intérieur, couloirs avec leurs tables garnies pour les pauses, tout semblait parfait pour accueillir les 1500 collègues […]

Paris, october 2016. In any way-finding system, arrows are key. Whether in the streets, a subway system, an airport, a park or a building, an arrow plays a crucial part in pointing to a specific site, while adding as a […]

The things you can do with writings are quite impressive. And they show how wrong were those who tried to analyze written words as mere representations of speech. Inverted commas are a good exemple of that. Theses little marks can […]