Le paysage urbain nocturne : une dialectique du regard entre ombre et lumière

This thesis questions the ways the urban landscape is constructed at night. It develops a dialectical approach of sight, between luminosity and darkness. Because the city becomes invisible in the darkness, the night puts the existence of the city in jeopardy. This thesis explores the new interpretations of the city resulting from the illuminated landscapes. The purpose is to understand the changing and unstable appearances of the city at night. To discover the city at night implies understanding the ephemeral aspects of its appearance, its capacity to survive and to be visually transformed. The night reveals the fascination for light as well as the fear of darkness. Night is governed by visual changes; it intensifies and multiplies the significance of the urban spaces to the viewer. Between Dionysian and malign nights, a variety of “urban nocturnal scenes” appears. Because night changes the visual conditions and therefore the perception of the city, this study develops a reflection on the urban landscape considering the night as a “heterotopia”. Situated at the meeting point of the real and the imaginary, this investigation questions the limits of what is visible in order to look at what is invisible. This research reveals a complex relationship between the city and lighting; it examines how the society looks at darkness and how new relations with urban spaces emerge at night. Lighting provides the backdrop for activities; it regulates city perceptions’ and experiences’ at night. Night time enables to consider the tensions between luminosity and darkness. This investigation of the “in-between” of light and dark contributes to the comprehension of the city at night through a transversal perspective. Therefore, this study is composed of a literature review on the evolution of urban lighting approaches, and on the relation that the city has with the night time iii and the darkness. It provides an understanding of new approaches of lighting design with the addition of new concepts emerging in the literature on the night. The methodological approach includes anthropological and experiential landscape perspectives to question the different ways of looking at the night. Interviews with stakeholders from different disciplines—urban planning, architecture, landscape architecture, design and art—and the study of the visual and sensitive experience of the city at night, provide a diversity of ways to see the city at night. Using Montreal as a case study, this Canadian metropolis offers an original context to better understand the relation that the occidental society has with the city at night. The dissertation presents a hierarchization of the representations of the urban spaces. From the recognition of downtown spaces, passing by the banalization of daily spaces and the misreading of marginal places, this research depicts a new portrait of Montreal and how it is seen and imagined at night. It contributes in a new comprehension on how the city is planned and experienced, depending on sociocultural representations of night time. It aims at defining what is the “nocturnal urban landscape”.

Keyphrases: perception, dark, lighting, illumination, landscape, city, night, experience, anthropology, urban planning, perception, oscuridad, luz, iluminación, paisaje, ciudad, noche, experiencia, antropología, urbanismo, percepción