Redevelopment of the Sports Complex
The project is located in the Quartier de la Piscine in Petit-Quevilly, south of the Rouen metropolitan area.
Situated on a former industrial site, the plot lies at the heart of a fragmented territory, divided by the Sud III expressway, which has long disrupted the urban continuity between the historic center and the eastern neighborhoods.
Until recently, the site read as a disparate assemblage: parking areas to the north, an urban boiler house at the center, dispersed public facilities to the south, all enclosed by a series of physical barriers – fences and ball-stops – which accentuated the fragmentation of the space.
An earth embankment, built to shield the site from the nuisances of the expressway, paradoxically reinforced this visual and physical rupture.
The project was born from a simple desire: to reconnect. Reconnect residents with their city, reconnect neighborhoods divided by infrastructure, reconnect sporting and cultural practices with the surrounding landscape. As part of the
National Urban Renewal Program (ANRU), the project offered a major opportunity to reunify the municipality around a large, federating public park.
On this three-hectare former industrial site, once fragmented and enclosed, the project now forms a vast public space where architecture and nature converge.
At the heart of the scheme, a 365-meter-long belvedere promenade traces a clear line across the landscape. Sometimes at ground level, sometimes elevated, this linear spine acts as an interface connecting all program elements – the multisport gymnasium, social facilities, leisure center, skatepark, and city stadium – while offering new perspectives over the city.
Beyond the initial program, we proposed a uniformly concrete skatepark, a half basketball court on the gymnasium rooftop, and the playful integration of slides into the site’s natural slopes.
The urban walkway becomes the backbone of the project: a simple yet powerful gesture that connects and reveals.
Around it, the park unfolds as a living, evolving landscape. Slopes are sculpted, rainwater is channeled through landscaped swales, and meadows and groves succeed each other in natural sequences. The whole forms a welcoming setting,
conducive to everyday uses, leisure, and social life — an open space accessible to all, where sport, nature, and the city come together.
The structural system of the urban figure, entirely realized in concrete, asserts a unitary approach that meets the requirements of cost control, durability, and architectural coherence.
Anchored into the slope, the gymnasium and social facilities open generously onto the exterior spaces, establishing a continuous dialogue between architecture and landscape.
Beneath the circular ramp that structures the heart of the project, the adolescents’ leisure center naturally finds its place. Here, architecture defines the boundaries of the inner courtyard and the skatepark to the west, articulating uses and fostering interaction within a shared space.
Extending outward from this central point, and in direct continuity with the circular ramp, the metropolitan footbridge provides a direct connection to the Town Hall district, bridging the Sud III and the railway lines.
The project’s unity is reinforced by a subtle, enduring, almost monolithic architectural language.
All façades are treated uniformly: a metal cladding enveloped by a secondary skin of metal grating wraps the buildings.
This single-material treatment lends the ensemble an almost abstract homogeneity, while modulating light and protecting glazed surfaces from damage.
The architecture acts as an urban clasp, reconnecting the fragmented parts of the territory and giving the neighborhood new breathing room.
Today, the project reads as a landscape to inhabit, to traverse, and to share — a project at the crossroads of architecture, urban design, civil engineering, and landscape architecture, offering the district a renewed sense of openness.
