This study, preconceives space as a social phenomenon, and emphasizes the fact that the urban space cannot be separated from its inhabitants. Accordingly, it suggests that the investigation of both the city and its inhabitants is crucial with respect to everyday life and practice. Hence, the study questions how inhabitants create their spaces following their needs and demands, and how the urban space is re-defined and re-produced through appropriation. Moreover, the study aims to understand how the inhabitants express themselves and how they resist through the spaces they produce in their daily practices. With this aim, the thesis investigates a spatial activity performed by young people in Ankara, the case of &lsquo / Minibar&rsquo / , for understanding the process explained as &lsquo / re-definition&rsquo / of urban space. The research reveals that these spaces become possible through their spatial characteristics. These spaces transgress the established space, yet they are sustained due to their ephemerality, impermanency and flexibility. Furthermore these spaces are discovered to be a medium of expression for the inhabitants. In conclusion, this study asserts an approach towards the city and explains that through looking to the &lsquo / lived spaces&rsquo / rather than rhetorics, calculations and presumptions, we can obtain a clear and actual picture about the city and the inhabitants.

Depuis la publication de l’Utopia de Thomas More au XVIe siècle, la notion d’utopie s’est vue appropriée par différents domaines d’expression artistique. Bien vite, l’architecture et l’urbanisme en font leur apanage lorsqu’il est question de concilier, en des dessins et des plans, des sociétés idéalisées et leurs représentations. La modernité et les nouvelles technologies modifient les modalités de l’utopie qui tend alors vers l’actualisation de ses modèles en des projets construits. Le XXe siècle est aussi marqué par une abondance de formes et d’idées dont la transmission et le partage sont accélérés par la création de nouveaux médias. Si les années 1960 et 1970 sont le lieu d’émergence de formes expérimentales et de projets utopiques, notamment alimentés par la Révolution tranquille et Mai 68, il est encore difficile au Québec de retracer ces projets en arts et en architecture puisqu’ils sont peu documentés. Par l’étude de la pratique artistique d’Yvette Bisson (1926-), de Robert Roussil (1925-2013) et de Melvin Charney (1935-2012), ce mémoire propose d’observer les différentes tactiques d’appropriation de l’espace auxquelles s’apparentent les modalités de la sculpture de ces trois artistes. Par l’intermédiaire de Michel de Certeau, Henri Lefebvre et Louis Marin, nous chercherons à expliquer quelle est la teneur critique des imaginaires mis en œuvre par les trois artistes pour créer de nouveaux lieux utopiques de la sculpture. / Since the first release of Thomas More’s Utopia in the XVth century, the notion of utopia has been appropriated by different means of artistic expression. Quickly, architecture and urban planning used it as an historical purview, when merging in drawings and maps, representations of idealized societies. Modernity and new technologies changed intrinsically utopia’s modalities; therefore artistic projections progressed towards built models. The XXth century has also shown plenty of innovative forms and ideas, whose transmission was accelerated by new media. Although the 1960s and the 1970s gave rise to experimental forms and utopian projects — especially powered by the Révolution tranquille and Mai 68 — it is still challenging to find traces of these art and architecture projects in Québec, due to lack of documentation on the subject. In studying artistic works and practices of Yvette Bisson, Robert Roussil and Melvin Charney, this master thesis intends to observe means and tactics used within their sculptures to seize space and its political dimension. Through Michel de Certeau, Henri Lefebvre and Louis Marin, we will attempt to clarify in which ways the three sculptors’ imagination is fully deployed, hence creating new utopian spaces in sculpture.