Project Objectives
The project offers students of the Seine-Saint-Denis department (on Paris' north-east border) the opportunity to reclaim and reimagine their living environments (especially their school), in the context of the transformations brought by the 2024 Olympic and Paralympic Games.
Through partnerships with educators, architects, and urban professionals, students participate in real-world urban planning and renovation projects, such as redesigning schoolyards, neighborhoods, or parts of the Olympic Village, using emerging technologies like Building Information Modeling (BMI).
Using games to work with youth
The primary tool is the videogame Minetest (now called Luanti), used as a collaborative 3D modeling environment. Each participating school works on a specific project area (e.g. a schoolyard or neighborhood), relying on official cartographic data from France's National Geographic Institute.
Before building in the game, students engage in documentation, field research, and ideation work. They alternate between real-world urban walks (observations, interviews, mapping) and virtual modeling sessions. The goal is to stimulate creativity, group work, and spatial thinking - with the game serving as a pedagogical tool, not an end in itself.
Projects are later presented to a panel of teachers and urban planning professionals. In many cases, architects act as intermediaries with local authorities, turning these models into urban consultation tools for and by young people. Furthermore, some of these perspectives are integrated in the remodelling of the backyard of the school itself.
Back and forth between field and research
Several engagement models have been tested:
- Project classes: long-term involvement across multiple years (grades 6–9)
- Three-day workshops: short-term intensives with specific groups
- After-school clubs
- Territory ↔ Virtual game feedback loops: alternating between field investigations and game-based modeling
Training for educators
To support implementation, participating teachers attend three annual training days, structured around:
- Theoretical sessions on the anthropological, political, and economic dimensions of urban transformation;
- Hands-on training on Minetest and its extensions;
- Curriculum planning sessions to design and adapt classroom activities;
Early Results
Since 2020, 8 middle schools and 2 high schools in Seine-Saint-Denis have taken part in the project, producing around 20 design proposals over two years. A new website is currently in development.
Future Perspectives
- Develop a national open-source platform for educational use of Minetest and urban modeling resources
- Offer a new model of youth-led urban consultation
- Promote a contributive research model where professionals, students, and residents collaborate on equal footing
- Support the emergence of new professions at the intersection of digital, architecture, and urban transformation
How climate is present in modelisations
As students explored how to redesign their everyday environments, many of their proposals reflected a strong concern for ecological resilience and social well-being, revealing a new generation's imagination of a livable urban future. Especially students who went to school in very urban areas, sometimes close to highways and polluted air.
Examples of common elements from these workshops included:
- Greening of schoolyards and neighborhoods: Many students proposed transforming paved, heat-absorbing courtyards into tree-filled, shaded, and biodiverse play areas, as a direct response to the urban heat island effect and climate change. Vegetation was often combined with spaces for learning, rest, and creativity, such as edible gardens, insect hotels, and shaded - with the help of very big trees- outdoor classrooms.
- Reclaiming public space for play and community: Teams imagined multifunctional spaces where sports, play, learning, and socializing could coexist, fostering a stronger sense of community and ownership. These spaces were seen not just as recreational areas.
- Renewables and reuse: Some teams included reuse of materials, integration of solar panels, and even systems for rainwater harvesting in their virtual models, showing an intuitive grasp of sustainable urban systems.