There is much more to Paris than inside the peripherique. With prices going up, creatives are retreating to Pantin, Ivry, and very soon there are big plans for Aubervilliers being dubbed “the Brooklyn of Paris”.
For our upcoming issue, we shot French rapper Jok’air with Alexander Wang x Adidas and Y-3 on location at an old military fort backed by Recup Paris an urban regeneration initiative bridging art and sustainability. Fort d’Aubervilliers, an ancient military fortress just outside the French capital, has for years been forgotten and ignored despite its historical value, but is now ready to re-emerge thanks to the regeneration intervention carried out by Recup Paris.
Recup Paris, a project founded by Dom Tappy and Thomas Winke, aims to transform the old abandoned spaces of an old, such as the disused military fort, into a creative hub. Walking around the fort, you see graffiti preserved, a hangar like an open canvas, and barracks one by one being renovated.
The founders explained “We believe that culture, creativity and the arts are able to influence our future and help us imagine new alternatives to some of the world’s most urgent issues. We are inspired by cities such as Amsterdam, Berlin, London, and New York, where abandoned areas have been converted into hotspots to divulge culture and creativity. Paris is the city of arts and has a rich cultural sector, but the city is facing particular challenges, particularly in terms of integration of different communities and urban regeneration.”
35mm photography by Niklas Bergstrand
