La Pile: electricity, the city and open-ended design
La Pile is an invitation to set up new electrical practices in the city. Producing electricity locally, sharing it among neighbours, using less of it or at other moment in time, collectively investing in the future...
Rooted in the reality of Brussels' neighbourhoods, La Pile enables residents and institutional players to team up and take ownership of electricity. By wanting to contribute, to have a relevant role to play.
Concrete projects have taken shape, fuelled as much by expert opinions and the technical configuration of infrastructure, as by the practices of pioneering individuals.
(see La Pile Expo catalogue and La Pile Pilotes sessions with experts)
While La Pile Mécanique illustrates the need to make renewable energies visible, SunSud shares solar energy in a social housing block and tackles the challenges of energy poverty. Pilone, run by a group of residents in the Quartier Midi, draws on existing communities (mosques, neighbourhood committees, trade unions, etc.) to create an "energy community". Remorque Réno, in the Quartier Nord, is trying to unite desires, needs and stakeholders around the challenge of conserving energy.
La Pile as an open-ended Design process by City Mine(d), with different initiatives emerging from it. The low voltage feeder is the perfect example of the technical-infrastructural relationship that links electricity users in a single neighbourhood, and which makes collaboration among neighbours self-evident. The feeder provides a strong socio-technical metaphor for a future energy landscape of communities that builds on the infrastructure already present in our streets.
illustration : Fanny Monier
