THIRD PLACES

# The Third Places Born from a sociological approach to our territories, the concept of “Tiers Lieux” is developing in France and in the world at high speed. They are intended to be physical or virtual spaces of encounters between people and varied skills that are not necessarily intended to meet each other. For us, the third place is a polymorphic modular space offering a physical and/or symbolic place to a community of users. It is polymorphic because it can take various forms depending on the needs of a territory and user communities. In this sense, there is therefore no standard third place. It is also modular because, like a Trivial Pursuit camembert, it can be composed of a set of modules, each of which has a clear repository (e.g. fablabs, hackerspaces, coworking spaces, medialabs, GULLs, etc.). Neither private nor public, they make up a hybrid solution between personal space and open space, home and work, conviviality and concentration. Third-places have a number of conditions enabling informal meetings and fostering creativity resulting from social interactions, in particular through openness, flexibility, sustainability, user-friendliness and accessibility. Occasional friends, neighbourhood residents, professionals in a sector can find themselves there and make it the crossroads of their community. Among regular users, conversation is the center of the activities and the mood is relaxed. Informal and familiar encounters in these places do not necessarily have to be planned between individuals who meet and find each other. Third places can be seen as so-called “transit” places that attribute a new meaning to space and culture through the communities that form and gather, networks that weave and grow around the uses that are made of them. In this context, the “coffee of the corner”, the connected bar, the artist squat or the cultural centre as public spaces serving as an informal meeting point can become third places depending on the use made by the individuals who lead, occupy and visit them. More than just a spatial feature, third-places are therefore largely the product of human relationships, creative interactions and modes of social and professional organisation dominant in contemporary societies. Each “third place” has its specificity, its functioning, its way of financing, but all promote creativity, initiative and sharing.