The new multistorey car park is located at the heart of the city of Montpellier, in the ZAC Nouveau Saint-Roch district. Acting as a structuring link between the pedestrian areas of the Place de la Comédie and Saint Roch railway station, this car park completes the intermodal junction.
The urban-balcony street, the backbone of the building, is a touching space, an extension of public space (ps) that enlivens relations between the users of the car park and the district’s residents. Acting as a crossing point, when it expands this balcony-street favours social cohesion. It is a space that illustrates the concept of private participatory space (pps) and invites users to enjoy coming together, favouring reunions and the common appropriation of private spaces as a natural continuation of the dynamics of public space.
This building is capable of transcending the initial programme and become a relational building that has an effect on its environment. It is an urban connection that links the district to the east of the station and the railway lines. The project, which has a potential for changing and developing that later on will allow it to accommodate offices, housing and other emerging uses, integrates the time vector in architecture with a view to the future.
The use of perennial material combined with an innovative application, ceramic fabric, allows us to incorporate an urban code, a ‘city habit’, and thereby bring the structure to a gentler level. The organoleptic building will vibrate with the passage of trains and the wind.