The French weekly magazine Libération published a contribution by Emanuele Coccia, philosopher and professor at the Ecole des hautes études en sciences socials (EHESS), describing the Grand Paris project, developed in 2009 by Stefano Boeri and Andrea Branzi, commemorating the work and life of the artist, who died on 9 October 2023.
The plan involves the simultaneous release of 50,000 sacred cows and 30,000 monkeys in Parisian parks and boulevards. The aim is twofold: on the one hand, to imagine a metropolis that is no longer anthropocentric, capable of a cosmic openness to the most extreme diversity. On the other hand, Branzi explains, ‘the presence of free animals in an urban fabric creates a kind of stress reduction; like elastomers inserted in an accelerated mechanism, they increase the level of unpredictability of the system and force it to slow down’.
This act would turn the city into a hybrid space that no longer belongs to any species. Paris would no longer belong to human beings, who could no longer claim ownership of streets or even objects, but neither would it belong to cows or monkeys, who could no longer inhabit the space along the Seine as if it were their ecosystem. Paris would become the name of a perpetual negotiation between different species, which would have to redesign the shape of the allocation of each small plot of space on a daily basis
For more information: https://www.liberation.fr/
The project was also shared in Domus magazine, in an interview with Andrea Branzi: https://www.domusweb.it/it/architettura/2018/05/31/andrea-branzi-riportiamo-gli-animali-al-centro-del-progetto-urbano.html