The regular urban grid Arenc sets the pace with authority, up to force the division of a single program on two plots. This constraint is largely compensated by the qualities of the site: Hyper-urban situation structured by a fragmented part of the Marseille history, in which the URM merges. Our project is a single building on two parcels: one monozygotic building from the same DNA, which unfolds in two sequences declined frame “Mires”.
This is both an entity: unity of place for a unifying agenda and a structuring scale equipment of a new district deployed on a wide linear coming unify a landscape based on common values. In a fractal work, the building divided by the street layout re-splits on each parcel, punctuated by landscaped empty nesting plant and mineral. The result is an airy urban form and extensively planted with contrasting templates, whose breaths benefit the neighborhood.
Malls and squares are linked in a geometric game claiming breakthroughs east-west sheltered from the mistral and dodger and releasing framing, views and outlook on the islets. The dense city is here associated with fragmentation of the frame in a location “open” promoting sunny, views, privacy specific to the Mediterranean city. The surrounding urban landscape is the starting point of a project thought with obsessive sense of being in the heart of the city. Here, the apparent emptiness site is a sham. This awareness of the context and its transformation is present in the design of our project.
The setting that defines épannelage of the old town to the west along the street Ruffi, extends south from the verticality of future residential towers. To the east a solitary building witnessed the history of the city punctuates the site. Thus the southwest limit of the boulevard of Paris not far from the highway, we mark the angle with a white cube levitating to assert verticality. This is to give clear presence of a high symbolic value perceived remote building.
The expanded rail system, planted, punctuated by mail trees on very wide sidewalks of the street Urban V is the major axis to which our plots are connected. It is from this public space safe, generous we distribute our two entities. The boulevard connecting element plays a role behind the scenes between our components: expanded space open to the city, able to accommodate groups of students in a de-saturated atmosphere, it is a logical extension complementary to the university.
The implementation of the project in the dense city – the city “service-based” with multiple means of public transport, entertainment and equipment, due to consumption of the territory a central issue. Aware of his surroundings, the project is compact, within a volume that gathers and reveals the diversity of the program. The buildings are treated as an urban piece crafted by geometrized territory of the district of Marseille.
The organization of mass plane involved in structuring an environment where buildings are not solitary objects, but elements of a whole. Thus, we are part of history and part of logic as the volumetric affiliations through the public space to crimp one: same size, same alignment, same set of hyphenation and faults, same handwriting, same materials, same color and lastly same figures for architectural access, stand, body building and the attic.
Data volumes are simple, proceeding from a real economy both in their materiality as in the choice of construction processes implemented. The materials and their implementation recount here all at once the history of trades, crafts while referring to the Mediterranean architecture in critical regionalism; work in educational value. We implement codes from a Mediterranean architecture, with white facades and porous, filter, composed of ouvrageux elements carry the expertise of trades. Source ECDM architects.
Location: Islets 1B and 1C2, ZAC Cité de la Méditerranée, Marseille, France
Architects: ECDM architects
Project leader: Benjamin Ferrer
Associated agencies: Marciano Architecture, Architect José Morales
BET: Ingenia Group Nox – Venatech – Ac2R
Acoustics: Venatech
Cuisiniste: AC2R
Global Security Consultant: Sûreté
Client: PACA Region
Area: 18505 m² SDP / 14500 m² SU
Cost: 35 M €
Year Contest: 2015
Year Delivery: 2018
Images: Courtesy of Emmanuel Combarel dominique marrech (ECDM)
