Graduation Project

Studio // Architecture & Complexity // 2012

Teachers // Dominique Coulon – Didier Laroche – Alexis Meier – Thomas Walter

Reconnect the Panier district to the new dynamics of urban project Euroméditerranée

Marseille, Bouches-du-Rhône, France

Marseille is currently experiencing a major urban renewal, the project Euroméditerrannée. New facilities, rehabilitation, restructuring and roadworks multiply throughout the city. One of the main points of this project is to restructure the urban coast. Indeed a true pedestrian promenade extends from the old port on the new boulevard along the coast.

The Cathedral Square is affected by this project, including its redevelopment totally pedestrian, with the burial of the roads, the restructuring of its arcades in shop.
The selected site is located at the junction between the new urban project on the coast and the historic quarter Le Panier which stays totally detached from the urban renewal and which access is currently difficult.
The project is to create a building capable of creating an opening between the neighborhood scale and urban scale project, combining together different programs: art, education, culture, housing and offices whose facility that will put them in touch will be a social and cultural center, including work areas, gyms, and relaxation areas for reading or an accompaniment of everyday life. Different architectural features will be implemented to create sequences in the building, views to the sea, the cathedrale and the quarter Le Panier. This place becomes a real intergenerational meeting place, which will be an entry point that will benefit the urban dynamic operating on the coast but also allow residents to link their neighborhood lives to the urban activity of Marseille.