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A Laboratory of Natural Experiment
A Laboratory of Natural Experiment
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A Laboratory of Natural Experiment
Amidst the turmoil of globalization, the industrial harbor complex of Fos-sur-Mer (France) is at a turn of its existence, either forced to disappear because of an ever-growing international competition, or aim at a very high quality of products and services, by implementing a global environmental ethics in a new understanding of its natural, economic and social environments.
In this context, our project is set on an exemplary fallow land in direct contact with a steel factory, an oil-refining plant, the Mediterranean coast and natural bits of landscape that survived the lightning industrialization of the site. This project is putting up a new dialectic between an industrial territory once designed in an unambiguous way and a blurred, moving, always fluxing contemporary world right next door. Thus the need to take into account new ecological requirements, local and regional urban problems, the question of leisure, the need for the industrial corporations to build new research facilities, etc.
The difficulties are manifold: the simultaneous apprehension of very different scales, the possibilities of a progressive auto-regeneration of the natural landscape, the absolute necessity to prevent any new urban sprawl, the intricacy of architecture with landscape, as well as opening up the site to a public audience while protecting its natural character, the complexity of water regimes influenced by climate change, etc.
This project proposes to turn all these difficulties into new opportunities. To do so we design a research laboratory which needs to be understood in the broadest sense: it constitutes an experiment at territory level, but also on an urban, landscape and architectural scale. In doing so, we aim at apprehending the whole site seamlessly, studying the complexity of nature and water regimes AND the functioning of the steel mill next door;
figure out what could work tomorrow BUT producing a project for here and for now.
In this context, our project is set on an exemplary fallow land in direct contact with a steel factory, an oil-refining plant, the Mediterranean coast and natural bits of landscape that survived the lightning industrialization of the site. This project is putting up a new dialectic between an industrial territory once designed in an unambiguous way and a blurred, moving, always fluxing contemporary world right next door. Thus the need to take into account new ecological requirements, local and regional urban problems, the question of leisure, the need for the industrial corporations to build new research facilities, etc.
The difficulties are manifold: the simultaneous apprehension of very different scales, the possibilities of a progressive auto-regeneration of the natural landscape, the absolute necessity to prevent any new urban sprawl, the intricacy of architecture with landscape, as well as opening up the site to a public audience while protecting its natural character, the complexity of water regimes influenced by climate change, etc.
This project proposes to turn all these difficulties into new opportunities. To do so we design a research laboratory which needs to be understood in the broadest sense: it constitutes an experiment at territory level, but also on an urban, landscape and architectural scale. In doing so, we aim at apprehending the whole site seamlessly, studying the complexity of nature and water regimes AND the functioning of the steel mill next door;
figure out what could work tomorrow BUT producing a project for here and for now.
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