The building plot lies on the thin strip of land between the Étang de Thau and the Mediterranean Sea on the northern side of the old town, close to the commercial port and its huge industrial facilities. As the last available parcel in a housing development project that began in the early 1990s, this plot is the first stage in an ambitious urban project that aims to convert huge swathes of abandoned docklands into a business and residential district. The project therefore sought to link these different scales of space and time together. How should we evoke the site’s past and at the same time, through architecture, forge a modern identity for this entrance point to the town of Sète and its emerging neighbourhoods? How should we respond to the titanic scale of the port, with the sea as the horizon, while also maintaining the old town’s way of living?
The plot of land is itself in a state of transition. The urban planners responsible for the new neighbourhood foresee that in future it will be bordered by three streets to form a complete block. Currently, it stands at the corner of two roads and next to a privately run aerial car park. Urban bye-laws make it impossible to align the new project with top of the car park and thereby set it against the blind party wall of the neighbouring housing development. So how can we tie the building’s development into the (far longer) development of the town? By splitting the building up.
No comments:
Post a Comment