The scheme is conceived as an urban development strategy in which the landscape becomes a tool for renewal and for densification. It is necessary to reconstruct the margins of the park, to densify and connect towns and to use the free space to design a “nature city”. Functions interconnect and overlap with each other: economic functions (free zone), residential functions (Europan 2005) and leisure functions (ponds and refined gardens designed by artists), around a showcase space, a sort of public living “lawn”, south of the urban area. The first operational phase reshapes a new geography, with some 200,000 m3 of cut and fill operations on site. The excavations form a 7 hectare lake with “theme” islands. It is the park’s center-piece, compensated by wooded “dry” islands, overlooking the large meadow. A new foundation for the future, multi-purpose and capable of accommodating numerous activities for leisure, for educational purposes or related to nature.
Date : 2005/2009 and 2012/2013
Missions : Public space project design and management
Surface : 160 ha
The project for the Orée du Parc is Phase 2 of the Parc des Iles. It is an area of around 7 ha, the site for the construction of the MEDD, an innovative building that is representative of current questioning and issues. The external spaces become the bases of the existing slag-heaps, the building and a gateway to the Parc des Iles.
The vegetation becomes a medium for aesthetic, educational and also functional uses. Education is associated with pleasure, with discovery and with work, while highlighting the time-scales related to the changes in the living matter of vegetation and encouraging experimentation and appropriation on the subject of “biological” messages.
Date : 2010/2013
Surface : 7.4 hectares