Photo: Gravier Martin Camara Architects © All rights reserved.

© FRES architectes > Laurent Gravier + Sara Martin Camara . Pubblicata il 03 Maggio 2007.

Nanterre, in the outskirts of Paris, is crossed by a mass of road and rail infrastructure that generates interstitial spaces and introverted, single-purpose units that help to define a dispersed urban fabric.

Image: Gravier Martin Camara Architects © All rights reserved.

© FRES architectes > Laurent Gravier + Sara Martin Camara . Pubblicata il 03 Maggio 2007.

The project tries to establish, on different scales, links between spaces, programs and inhabitants. It tries to conceive a place to work, to study and to inhabit. To reach these goals the program is fragmented and alternated into housing and office units, which produces a wide range of combinations: office/housing, built up space / free space, full / empty. These combinations take the shape of programmatic strips, spatial force-lines, the basis for an urban, an architectural and a landscape project.

Image: Gravier Martin Camara Architects © All rights reserved.

© FRES architectes > Laurent Gravier + Sara Martin Camara . Pubblicata il 03 Maggio 2007.

These programmatic strips generate lines of activities, transversal relationships that dissolve the edge of the motorway. They allow the creation of a landscape project and become the support for the design of a municipal sports park, an urban park. Each strip is either a square, a neighbourhood space, a walkway or, across the motorway these strips turn into the basis for an urban sports-park: boulevards, sports fields, grandstands, changing rooms… This is a soft infrastructure, designed for the pace of the inhabitants, which is superimposed on the existing high-speed infrastructrure.

Photo: Gravier Martin Camara Architects © All rights reserved.

© FRES architectes > Laurent Gravier + Sara Martin Camara . Pubblicata il 03 Maggio 2007.

The width of each strip defines a typology which leads to variations, producing a wide diversity of life and work styles. It thus becomes possible to work from home, beside home, near home. The office blocks are aligned along the motorway while the apartments blocks have a free position, creating spatial tensions and opening-up views across La Défense and Paris.

Photo: Gravier Martin Camara Architects © All rights reserved.

© FRES architectes > Laurent Gravier + Sara Martin Camara . Pubblicata il 03 Maggio 2007.

A few floors below, each apartment has its own private terrace. The roof is a complex platform where the apartment entrances are situated. These have an inverted organisation, freeing the ground floor for flexible use. The roof space is either a public crossing, a private garden, a terrace… Each situation is characterised by a certain type of geometry and matter, creating varied landscapes; meeting places, passing-by places, places for relationships and for living ‘à ciel ouvert’.

Photo: Gravier Martin Camara Architects © All rights reserved.

© FRES architectes > Laurent Gravier + Sara Martin Camara . Pubblicata il 03 Maggio 2007.

Image: Gravier Martin Camara Architects © All rights reserved.

© FRES architectes > Laurent Gravier + Sara Martin Camara . Pubblicata il 03 Maggio 2007.

Image: Gravier Martin Camara Architects © All rights reserved.

© FRES architectes > Laurent Gravier + Sara Martin Camara . Pubblicata il 03 Maggio 2007.

Image: Gravier Martin Camara Architects © All rights reserved.

© FRES architectes > Laurent Gravier + Sara Martin Camara . Pubblicata il 03 Maggio 2007.

Image: Gravier Martin Camara Architects © All rights reserved.

© FRES architectes > Laurent Gravier + Sara Martin Camara . Pubblicata il 03 Maggio 2007.

Photo: Gravier Martin Camara Architects © All rights reserved.

© FRES architectes > Laurent Gravier + Sara Martin Camara . Pubblicata il 03 Maggio 2007.

Photo: Gravier Martin Camara Architects © All rights reserved.

© FRES architectes > Laurent Gravier + Sara Martin Camara . Pubblicata il 03 Maggio 2007.

Photo: Gravier Martin Camara Architects © All rights reserved.

© FRES architectes > Laurent Gravier + Sara Martin Camara . Pubblicata il 03 Maggio 2007.

Photo: Gravier Martin Camara Architects © All rights reserved.

© FRES architectes > Laurent Gravier + Sara Martin Camara . Pubblicata il 03 Maggio 2007.

Photo: Gravier Martin Camara Architects © All rights reserved.

© FRES architectes > Laurent Gravier + Sara Martin Camara . Pubblicata il 03 Maggio 2007.

Photo: Gravier Martin Camara Architects © All rights reserved.

© FRES architectes > Laurent Gravier + Sara Martin Camara . Pubblicata il 03 Maggio 2007.