Title: Market 
Date: 08-06-2018
Tags: Biennale Internationale Design Saint-Etienne 2017, Entretien e(s)t l'architecture, Maintenance as architecture, market, selective cleaning
Mood: tired
Image: 42en.svg

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The city of Saint-Etienne has a total of about forty-eight markets per week that are distributed over twenty-four different sites. 
For the maintenance crews, the cleaning of these sites is almost a daily task. 
Between 13h and 13h30 each day, each maintenance team cleans the markets within its sector. 
The agents act together: the vehicles arrive, the men disperse, organize the area, and then leave. 
The action is fast and takes place simultaneously in different districts of the city as a collaboration of different services 
of both public agency and private companies.

In the city of Saint-Etienne, the markets are one of two types: the “selective-cleaning markets,” where the markets make just 
a quick first pass of sorting and cleaning their sites before a more thorough intervention by official cleaning services, 
or the “clean markets,” where the markets themselves are responsible for a more thorough cleaning of their sites and disposal of 
their own waste. At the end of each market-day, different agents enter the scene in a choreographed ballet: 
agents of the city clean, a private company recovers the recyclable waste, and agents of the capital collect what remains.