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Architects: Ateliers 2/3/4/
- Area: 4341 m²
- Year: 2014
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Photographs:Clément Guillaume
Text description provided by the architects. Places that create links, links that create places
For 2/3/4/ developing public space, streets and places just as parks and gardens is first considered as a whole, an intervention in the service of an overall urban, landscaping and architectural coherence.
Public or private, "free" space should be designed neither in strict isolation nor as an "ancillary space". Thus it becomes a separate program that includes all the often contradictory objectives, all the requirements.
Even if the space is constricted, the 2/3/4/ approach will always try to make the world - for the garden is always itself a small world - bigger than it is, to expand and extend it into private sites and especially to put these spaces "in network". A constant subject of research is to create visual, hydraulic or biological continuities but also continuous itineraries.
In an increasingly urbanize society, environmental concerns and the need to "increase density" become more demanding each day. The question of public space and "nature within the city" is an especially pressing concern. Yet the public space, garden or square in our view can not be a resultant, an afterthought but on the contrary, a generator of traces and links.
As from today, an urban complex of some importance develops its "square" and "garden" so that at the same time, these spaces ferment a social link but also an identity, a representation of the neighborhood itself.
In a city that is looking for a center, the new marketplace is a specific challenge: to unite construction programs at different scales, to stage the new Ateliers Hermès, to provide terraces for new shops, to create new continuities. The "stitching" on the ground, treated as a granite floor, recalls saddle stitching whilst the trees and furniture slip into the spaces between market stalls.
