Invisible Bièvre | coucou.design

Discover La Bievre, the infamous underground river of Paris. Once running freely through the city and its suburb, she was buried in 1910 before falling into oblivion.

Invisible Bièvre is an immersive audioguide taking you on an exploratory quest to find the hidden treasures she left behind. Highlighting the rich cultural, historical and ecological legacy of the river, Invisible Bievre hopes to help envision a world where nature and the city cohabit in harmony.

Created and directed by Paul Pajot
Written by Louise Darblay
3d modelling by Maxime Ordonneau
AR/VR development by Benjamin Verdeaux and Dries Standaert

Concept

From Cachan to Paris

From the Lutèce-Lyon bridge to a Roman Aqueduct, from shared gardens to tall poplars, from street art to the Robert Doisneau museum... The course of the Bièvre connects history, culture and nature through Paris and its suburbs.

Follow the dowsing rod

Like a modern dowser, follow the course of the Bièvre thanks to our interactive web-app. The sound of its waves will grow stronger as you get closer, revealing its many stories.

To find its messengers
and reconnect with nature

La Bièvre, old French for “beaver”, sends us four messengers who will tell you the river side of our history from its thousands of years in the wild until its recent disappearance.

Mission

In our modern world, the search for control and comfort has put the human in cities at the center of everything that surrounds them.

I think this environment isolates us from the nature of the territories we occupy and come from. This anthropocentric artificial environment feeds a cult of our species, making us less and less able to understand the limits of our condition and the natural resources that surrounds us.

In a moment of realisation in the face of an inevitable ecological transition, I want to create emotional connections between citizens and their invisible natural environment to offer us the opportunity to change perspective, to observe our existence from another angle, to to place ourselves within the ecosystem of which we are a part and thus to better understand and appreciate - and therefore preserve - the nature that is around and within us.

Paul Pajot

Immersive story example

This experience has been created to be loaded from a QR code on your phone (synchronising with your gyroscope) at the Aqueduc Medicis here.
You can view it on desktop by clicking on "Démarrer l'experience", look around by draging your mouse and listen to the story.

Full screen experience

App design principles

Those prototypes are for visual reference and interaction principles only.

Status

After a year of development in collaboration with Narrative, a multimedia production studio based in Paris, Invisible Bievre is currently looking for new development opportunities.

They support us

Les Ateliers du Val de Bièvre, La Ressourcerie La Mine, Les Amis du Val de Bièvre, Narrative production.

Support us

Feel free to contact us at bonjour@paulpajot.com if you are interested in collaborating on this project. Follow the making on our dedicated instagram.