Young parisian architect Clément Blanchet has revealed his shortlisted entry for Réinventer Paris’s Pershing competition. The winner will be announced on the 3rd of february at the Pavillon de l’Arsenal. The city of Paris has launched a call for innovative urban projects and offered 23 sites to all professionnals to express the future of the city.
The «Pershing» plot and the volume over the Périphérique, Avenue de la Porte des Ternes for the construction of a bridging building, are located between the Porte Maillot and the Porte des Ternes next to the Palais des Congrès de Paris. This currently under-used site will be at the heart of the Porte Maillot renewal operation, a strategic part of Greater Paris, linking the central business district with La Défense.
The exceptional visibility of this plot and the importance of the traffic flowing through it, suggested an innovative and cutting-edge project. The proposal by Clément Blanchet Architecture is to cover the parisian ring and to build a metropolitan presence next to the convention center. « In «réinventer paris» I was thinking about reinventing something which has vanished.» said Clément Blanchet.
Merely being a technological answer, « Re-invention » must create urbanity. The project’s size allows to reveal and discover the historical strata of the city from which we invent a form of rebirth. The project of a cultural center of production and representation is a homecoming.
He hopes to reactivate the city and offers a Metropolitan object. Rediscovering its historical tracks, we reanimated the city in this very rough neighborhood. Here, modernity is the result of a spontaneous process which extends the existing urban fabric (the base), and a new metropolitan piece (the hollow square).
The project considers in the same way past, present and future. Reinventing Paris is an act of memory. the memory of a country, a culture, of progress. The site without clear boundary, unstable and tortured, is cut off from its immediate context by the roadway. Four specific actions are both revealing and healing this fracture.
1. Connect the two existing fabrics
2. Reveal the historical tracks
3. Generate a metropolitan building
4. Recreate a living place: an urban garden
The project is part of a comprehensive approach at the scale of the architecture, the neighborhood and the city.
The establishment of these four elements resonates beyond the project site boundaries and radiates throughout the town. The project will not be an isolated act. It offers an opened encounter place for the city. Connect the two existing fabrics Reveal the historical layers Generate a metropolitan building Recreate a living place: an urban garden. Source and images Courtesy of Clément Blanchet.
