International architecture competition, Imagine Angers, asked design teams to propose innovative architecture on one of six different sites in Angers, France. Participants included Manuelle Gautrand, Steven Holl, Duncan Lewis, XTU, Sou FUJIMOTO and OXO architects.
We are proud to reveal our winning project for the ‘Quai Saint-Serge’ site. One of the biggest sites, the brief called for a reconversion of this industrial brownfield zone into a dynamic and innovative neighbourhood. The city of Angers initiated our reflection on this exceptional site.
This project will be emblematic of the city’s ambition that animates all national and European cities. Innovation is a conception tool that transforms unknown places and territories. Innovation in urban landscape is about finding new ways of living in harmony with the public space.
Innovation is a tool for attractivity. This research provides new programme, technical and spatial solutions, which allow the project to become a strong signal.
Our project is a synthesis that will implant itself in the site and become a new typology. We are going to create adventure, surprise and emotions alongside our willingness to conceive a project that represents the city’s ambitions.
The context combined with this exceptional site enabled our team to enhance the project in order to propose a new way of living in Angers. We have introduced fluidity by linking filled and empty spaces and treating them as different topographical levels, avoiding ruptures.
The building therefore becomes an extruded piece of the territory. It is therefore a confluence project. We do not wish to differentiate or to provoke, but to create a dialogue and to reconnect in order to invent. This exchange will create a pioneering project, a symbol of the 21st century: the project Métamorphose. Source by Hamonic+Masson & Associés.
- Location: Quai Saint-Serge, Angers, France
- Architect: Hamonic+Masson & Associés
- Landscape design: BASE
- Environmental engineer: Franck Boutté
- Developer: Groupe Giboire
- Urban planner: Agence Grether
- City planner: ALTER
- Client: City Angers
- Program: Co-living appartments, sport centre with rock climbing wall and gym, offices, restaurant + parking
- Status: winners of the “Imagine Angers” competition
- Surface area: 24 500 m2
- Year: 2018
- Images and video: Luxigon, Courtesy of Hamonic+Masson & Associés