“The urban decision is generated by its own context. Three clusters would react to three specific contexts, three urban scales. Amplifying their own specificities allow as well to define a real diversity of living conditions. The socle reunify the figures to provide a cohesive infrastructure.”
Heart of district Nanterre
The city of Nanterre is located west of la Défense. The city has a very special history with the urban development of the last half of the 2Oth century. After 1950, the population of Nanterre nearly doubled. There was an urgent need for new housing to accommodate this new population and eradicate the slum that was developed a few kilometres from La Défense. Its territory is essentially composed of “ Grand Ensemble” social housing irrigated by the infrastructure.
This fragmented, discontinuous and heterogeneous territory was for us the starting point of a possible urban reflection. The project site has a unique positioning, bordered by infrastructure and some large, partially heterogeneous and inherited urban interfaces such as social housing districts, a university campus, a new railway station and a new linear public space device : the “Nanterre terrace project”. Our urban posture is constructed from three coherent thought processes : the inclusion of the three spatial scales of the project, the reinterpretation of the formal heritage of the historical axis and development perspectives around an “active axis”.
EPADESA wishes to welcome in this territory offices, housing and shops. As they called it, the “District heart”, in this system, should become the new urban centrality directly connected to the metropolitan infrastructure with the new station. The site itself is already constrained, like the city, by the infrastructures. A tunnel train crosses the site. In response, our project develops three entities, three groups that respond to all different scales : 1. metropolitan, 2. the neighbourhood, 3. the local. Each cluster has developed a special relationship with its environment and offers independent architectural figures. At the same time, they are complementary, linked at the base with businesses that connect all public spaces.
The project introduces a real diversity around the typology of housing with particular attention to views, terraces, nuisances and interfaces with the city.
credits
Architects : OMA France (Clément Blanchet)
Client : SOGEPROM
Nature of the operation : couple contest architect-developer
Realised in : 2014
Status : second
Site : Coeur de quartier, Nanterre, France
Program : Housing (34,000 m2 SDP), offices (26,000 m2 SDP), shops (10,000 m2) parking
Exact assignment : associate and coordinating director at OMA
team development
Engineering : Arcoba (bureau d’études TCE)
Sustainability : Arcoba Environment
Acoustics : Peutz
Project management : SCO
Renders/images : L’autre image
Landscaper : D’ici là