Thanks to the nomadic and immer­sive exhi­bi­tion project sup­port­ed by UTC’s Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Depart­ment, a new col­lab­o­ra­tion with the Lycée des Métiers d’Arts in Saint-Quentin has come into being. The idea is to cre­ate an immer­sive wood­en space to broad­cast pod­casts cre­at­ed to mark the school’s 50th anniversary.

Anoth­er fruit­ful col­lab­o­ra­tion between the Lycée des Métiers d’Arts in Saint-Quentin and the UTC’s indus­tri­al design engi­neer­ing pro­gramme has led to the cre­ation of the 50th Anniver­sary Box. Mea­sur­ing 4 m² and 2.40 m high, the hexag­o­nal-shaped box with a flat roof, made entire­ly of wood­en pan­els was deliv­ered at the begin­ning of June. “The spec­i­fi­ca­tions were very pre­cise, but left plen­ty of scope for cre­ativ­i­ty. In par­tic­u­lar, the box had to be able to be dis­man­tled and reassem­bled on UTC’s dif­fer­ent sites, in an envi­ron­men­tal­ly-friend­ly way. It is main­ly made up of pan­els, assem­bled using wood­en keys. It also has to have good acoustic prop­er­ties so that you can expe­ri­ence a real immer­sion expe­ri­ence full of sur­pris­es,” says Thomas Boutin, head of the IDI pro­to­typ­ing work­shop. With a back­ground in cab­i­net­mak­ing that began at the Lycée des Métiers d’Arts in Saint-Quentin, he imme­di­ate­ly thought of con­nect­ing the two estab­lish­ments on this project when the UTC’s Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Depart­ment approached him. Not to men­tion embody­ing a sus­tain­able devel­op­ment approach. In fact, both inside and out­side the box, card­board fur­ni­ture spe­cial­ly cre­at­ed from recy­cled card­board tubes will also pro­vide a com­fort­able wel­come so that you can ful­ly enjoy the “Box des 50 ans” experience.

Collaborative work between the two schools

“We’ve been in con­tact with UTC for five years, with our stu­dents in the first year of their cab­i­net­mak­ing nation­al diplo­ma. Fif­teen of them from all back­grounds are tak­ing part in this project. They are extreme­ly moti­vat­ed by the project. They pre­sent­ed UTC with three lines of work to val­i­date, in par­tic­u­lar, the aes­thet­ics of the box. After the cre­ation and design phase, it was time for the com­plete man­u­fac­tur­ing process. The stu­dents divid­ed up the work: cut­ting the pan­els, mak­ing the keys, assem­bly, var­i­ous machin­ing oper­a­tions,” explains Nico­las Grenaut, 40, who teach­es con­tem­po­rary cab­i­net­mak­ing to stu­dents on the Diplôme Nation­al des Métiers d’Art et du Design, cab­i­net­mak­ing, her­itage, dig­i­tal and mate­ri­als at the Lycée des Métiers d’Arts in Saint-Quentin. “Work­ing with our stu­dents on a real project is always a great oppor­tu­ni­ty. The stu­dents are always more com­mit­ted. This was the case for Melis­sa Renard from the acoustics and vibra­tion engi­neer­ing course,” points out Thomas Boutin, who was imme­di­ate­ly attract­ed by the com­mu­ni­ca­tions team’s pro­pos­al. From an edu­ca­tion­al point of view, it’s very inter­est­ing to be able to com­bine the skills and knowl­edge of the high school pupils and our stu­dents on such con­crete projects,” he con­tin­ues. They can be proud of themselves.

The genesis of the “Nomadic and immersive exhibition” project

The nomadic and immer­sive exhi­bi­tion was con­ceived with the aim of telling the sto­ry of UTC in an orig­i­nal way, oth­er than in the form of a book that had already been pro­duced for UTC’s 40th anniver­sary. “Anne-Fleur Andr­le, a UTC grad­u­ate and pro­duc­er of pod­casts, sug­gest­ed as an alter­na­tive a series of pod­casts, in tune with the times and more “alive”. We had to come up with a way of ‘offer­ing’ these episodes, and the idea of a sort of ‘cocoon’ in which we could set­tle down and take the time to lis­ten to the sto­ry came up,” explains Dorothée Prot-Tombi­ni, a graph­ic design­er in the UTC com­mu­ni­ca­tions team who has been work­ing for over a year on the UTC’s 50th anniver­sary and the con­cept of an immer­sive box. “We also want­ed an exhi­bi­tion that would reach out to peo­ple and be eas­i­ly acces­si­ble. As there are sev­er­al UTC build­ings scat­tered around the city, the idea of a nomadic exhi­bi­tion seemed rel­e­vant to us. That’s how we came up with the idea of a ‘box’ that could be eas­i­ly assem­bled, dis­man­tled and trans­port­ed by our logis­tics team, who pro­vide invalu­able assis­tance. We then designed the scenog­ra­phy of this exhi­bi­tion around the box, which would include key dates in the his­to­ry of UTC-Com­pieg­ne, pho­tos and anec­dotes in the form of mul­ti-sized totems made of recy­cled cardboard”.