“The guide plan for Bordeaux 50000 housings is balancing geography and urbanity, infrastructure and architecture, innovation and simplicity, growth and quality, it is about transforming complexe conditions into a coherent and cohesive vision.”
50,000 housings
In 2012, OMA has been selected by the Communauté Urbaine de Bordeaux (CUB) to develop a strategy for the introduction of 50,000 new housing units across 27 communes. The strategy will seek ways to achieve density, mixed use and accessibility for the new housing over a territory of 550km2, allowing Bordeaux to absorb population growth in a sustainable way. At the same time, the scheme must develop density without being necessarily urban. But how do you support 120,000 new inhabitants in 50,000 new homes within a territory already deeply impacted by urban sprawl, an urbanization strategy of 40 years old, which advocates cars and private housing as a standard – even though public transport is improving at the same time? And how do you do this in a way that will lead to sustainable rather than destructive and expansive growth?
The three sites - Bordeaux-Lac, Merignac-Soleil, and Bègles-Villenave - present distinct conditions that demand specific forms of urbanism as new gateways to the city of Bordeaux. The project, at the urban scale, proposes an equilibrium between ecology and urbanity. Architecturally, it proposes building types that innovatively address the demands for human growth in terms of housing, commerce, and public space.
In 2016, OMA won the competition to develop the masterplan and design the public space of the Mérignac-Soleil. This area is located on the main axis connecting the city centre of Bordeaux and its airport, and at the heart of a green city. It’s development on former agricultural lands started in the late 60s with the arrival of Carrefour. Over the past decades, the growth of large retail activities made it the second most important commercial hub of the region (second only to the centre of Bordeaux), but created a hostile environment with large areas of parking lots and generic hangars. The anticipated arrival of a tram line is the opportunity to rethink this territory and its transformation into a lively / healthy neighbourhood.
The issues with a sterile environment such as Merignac-Soleil is very singular for Bordeaux, but quite generic in the context of suburban areas. Thus, the strategy for Merignac-Soleil is that of a Projet Pilote which focuses on developing strategies and ways to implement them that can be applied to sites with similar issues throughout many other suburban areas. For this complex urban project, we develop different innovative strategies: progressive conversion of asphalt surfaces into green areas without disrupting commercial activities, development of autonomous micro neighbourhoods – voisinées - to respond to phasing complexity, Creation of a network of public spaces and pedestrian friendly mobility, Ability to accommodate the complexities of different land ownership configurations in a coherent vision.
credits
Architects : OMA France (Clément Blanchet)
Clients : Communauté Urbaine de Bordeaux
Realised in : 2012-2013
Status : current deployment
Site : Bordeaux Lac, Mérignac, Bègles
Program : Call for projects aiming to reflect on the mutable land pockets on the Bordeaux territory
Budget : not indicated
Exact Mission : Associate and Director in charge of the study at OMA
team composition
Engineering : IOSIS
Sustainability : ELIOTH
Expert real estate : CBRE
Landscape : Coloco
Landscape designer (MÉRIGNAC-SOLEIL): Michel Desvigne Paysagiste
Engineers (MÉRIGNAC-SOLEIL): ALTO
Lighting (MÉRIGNAC-SOLEIL): 8'18"