Étiquette : urbanisme
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San Francisco, avant et après
Que se passe-t-il dans une ville en 100 ans? Comment changent-ils l’espace public et sa perception? Quels aspects de la ville tend-on à privilégier quand on doit la décrire? Pour entamer une réflexion sur tout ça, voici deux vidéos: la scène est toujours la même, la Market Street de San Francisco, mais entre les deux…
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Parking, repurposed
On Reinventing Parking, a post wonders about the possibility of turning parking spaces into something else. A good case study is Rome: here, zoning laws and parking requirements are rarely enforced and so, as soon as the land values rise, parking spaces turn into something more profitable. Here are a few examples: a gym a…
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Écoquartier des Plaines du Loup: voici le projet laureat!
…et finalement, voici le visage du nouvel Écoquartier! Félicitations au Bureau Tribu Architecture! Toutes les infos sur leur site et sur le site de la Ville de Lausanne (aussi en PDF). Et maintenant, tous au travail: la démarche participative sera riche et intéressante! (images: tribu architecture)
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Urban Beaches
Summer approaches, time to pack our stuff, fill our car and leave for a long long trip, that wil take us, after several hours, to a nice beach very far away… Or maybe not. Why do we have to travel so much to find a place that makes us feel good? There is another solution,…
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Basel, Gundeldinger Feld
Today, I’ll take you to Basel, at Dornacherstrasse 192,where an old factory has been transformed into a neighborhood center, Gundeldinger Feld. The history of this place could be the same as many other places around the world: a 19th century factory in the inner city suddenly moving to the suburbs in order to look for…
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« Sur les moulins » à Denges: transit-oriented ou pas?
Il y a quelque semaine, j’ai découvert le quartier « sur les Moulins » (plus de détails là et là) à Denges, entre Lausanne et Morges. Par rapport à la moyenne des nouvelles réalisations dans le canton, ce projet semble aller vers un développement de type « transit oriented », même s’il y a plusieurs aspects qui me laissent…
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Des écoquartiers à Abu Dhabi?
Peu à peu, le concept d’écoquartier commence à devenir d’actualité: de plus en plus de villes commencent à utiliser ses principes et ses recommandations dans leur planification urbaine, et à les utiliser comme outils de promotion dans le contexte international. Et quand ces principes se mélangent avec l’approche arabe à l’écologie, ça c’est le résultat:
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BRT under construction in Rome
Wandering around the web, I discovered today a good news from Rome: A brand new BRT opening in the south-east of the city. The new infrastructure will start from ANAGNINA subway station and extend further east, passing through Cinecittà Est and Tor Vergata. All details of this infrastructure are here (PDF). (image: Roma Metropolitane)…
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Mixed-use suburbs
Some days ago, at the conference « desperate houses » at the EPFL, I heard about a research, realized by the architectural firm Raumbureau, saying that, in the suburbs, around 1 over 5 houses is refurbished as office space. If this tendence goes on: Little by little, suburbs will become true villages with offices, shops, post offices,…
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Plans d’urbanisme et stratégies commerciales: l’exemple du quartier de Pietralata à Rome
Un des éléments qui caractérisent l’espace urbain est le commerce. Le commerce est là ou les gents se réunissent, et souvent est le facteur qui crée les liens entre les habitants d’une ville. Et le commerce est un des éléments qui échappent plus facilement à la planification urbaine. Les boutiques ouvrent et ferment très rapidement…
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La mixité arrive dans les zones villas
Aujourd’hui, dans la conférence « desperate houses » à l’EPFL, je suis venu à connaissance d’un étude, mené par le bureau Raumbureau, qui dit que, dans les zones villas, en moyenne 1 maison sur 5 est reconvertie en espace bureau. Donc, si cette tendance se confirme: Peu a peu, les zones villas pourront devenir des véritables villages,…
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New Urbanism vs. Suburbanism
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3 ideas to retrofit suburbia
(photo: flickr) This month, everybody talks about suburbs (and about the prominent feature of suburbs, cars): some posts on RSR website (here, here and here), the last edition of the forum Ecoparc: So, it’s the right moment to talk about this subject, and to propose a strategy to align autorities and developers’ interests. 1 –…
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stratégie en 3 étapes pour requalifier les zones villas
(photo: flickr) Ce mois, la zone villa (et son complément, la voiture) est à l’ordre du jour: des émissions sur le site de la RSR (Voir par exemple là, là et là), un forum de l’association Ecoparc (j’en avais déjà parle là): donc, c’est la bonne occasion pour réfléchir sur le sujet et proposer une…
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Ada Lovelace Day: Jane Jacobs
Today is Ada Lovelace day, a day in which each blogger should talk about a woman who changed the world in her field: a good occasion to talk about the person who gave the biggest contribute to contemporary urbanism, Jane Jacobs. XIX and early XX century were the century of machines, a century in which…
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Des villes nouvelles dans la Metropole Lémanique?
Maintenant c’est clair, et même des sources officielles comme les Urbanités de la RSR le disent: dans le canton de Vaud des villes nouvelles sont en train d’émerger. Des villes comme Nyon ou Morges sont en train de devenir des pôles majeures de la Métropole Lémanique, au point de pouvoir concurrencer Genève ou Lausanne. De…
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Refurbishing modernist masterpieces: two examples from Rome
The city within a building – Mario Fiorentino In the last 50 years, we built a massive amount of buildings, experimenting techniques and philosophies as never before. Reinforced concrete, cheap energy and cars allowed us a freedom to build we’ve never experienced before. Now, most of these ideas and techniques look outdated, and the building themselves are…
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Réqualification des infrastructures automobiles: la Librairie Arion à Rome
Dans les dernières 50 années nous avons construit beaucoup d’infrastructures. Échangeurs routiers, passages souterrains, autoroutes urbaines…toutes infrastructures que maintenant commencent à n’être plus à la mode, et que nécessitent un nouvel usage. Et donc, voici un exemple: un passage souterrain, creusé dans les années 60 dans la Piazza Fiume à Rome. Le temps ont changé,…
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The rise and fall of the « Unité d’Habitation » – 7/7
50 years after the first Unité, this model seems already belonging to the past. The strong separation between the building and its surroundings, the sensation of living in an all-artificial environment, and an almost complete identification of the Unité d’Habitation with social housing have made this model quite undesirable. The destiny of the millions of…
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The rise and fall of the « Unité d’Habitation » – 6/7
Promoted as a standard, easy-to-build product, The Unité d’Habitation concept spread all over the world after WWII. The first 5 units (Marseille, Firminy, Rezé, Briey and Berlin) built by Le Corbusier himself became the standard for almost all public housing project between 1950 and 1990. The more the model was spread along the world, the…
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The rise and fall of the « Unité d’Habitation » – 5/7
Promoted as a standard, easy-to-build product, The Unité d’Habitation concept spread all over the world after WWII. The first 5 units (Marseille, Firminy, Rezé, Briey and Berlin) built by Le Corbusier himself became the standard for almost all public housing project between 1950 and 1990. The more the model was spread along the world, the…
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The rise and fall of the « Unité d’Habitation » – 4/7
Promoted as a standard, easy-to-build product, The Unité d’Habitation concept spread all over the world after WWII. The first 5 units (Marseille, Firminy, Rezé, Briey and Berlin) built by Le Corbusier himself became the standard for almost all public housing project between 1950 and 1990. Rome, Corviale, 1972-1982 (image: flickr). Strict translation of the Unité…
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The rise and fall of the « Unité d’Habitation » – 3/7
In the beginning of the XX century, steamships were crossing the Atlantic Ocean. Each one of them could carry 2000 passengers for a 15-days trip between Europe and America, and in these days it became for them a sort of new house. The image of all these people living, loving, fighting, making business, all in…
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The rise and fall of the « Unité d’Habitation » – 2/7
In the beginning of the XX century, steamships were crossing the Atlantic Ocean. Each one of them could carry 2000 passengers for a 15-days trip between Europe and America, and in these days it became for them a sort of new house. The image of all these people living, loving, fighting, making business, all in…
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The rise and fall of the « Unité d’Habitation » – 1/7
SS Empress of britain, pre-1924 (image: wikimedia commons). In the beginning of the XX century, steamships were crossing the Atlantic Ocean. Each one of them could carry 2000 passengers for a 15-days trip between Europe and America, and in these days it became for them a second home. MS Kungsholm, entrance to 1st class room,…
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Architecture et complexité
Un des facteurs qui contribuent à la création d’un espace urbain vivant et intéressant est la complexité. Face à des gros projets, les architectes essaient parfois de recréer une complexité dans leur bâtiments: cette approche nécessite un gros travail de conception et donne souvent des résultats pas tout à fait satisfaisants . Moshe Safdie, Habitat…
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Architecture and complexity
One of the features of a great built environment is complexity. When facing big-scale projects, most of the architects have tried to recreate a complexity in their buildings, with a huge effort and not very satisfying results. Moshe Safdie, Habitat 67 (image: wikipedia) Frank Gehry, MIT Stata Center (image: wikipedia) Another option allows a better result…
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Bridge « Antonio Segni », Rome: what future for the automobile infrastructure?
A highway is a mono-functional road, designed to carry cars from one place to another at a maximum speed. But, sometimes highways don’t carry so many cars as expected, and other uses start to appear. An example of the re-use of highways was the Antonio Segni Bridge in Northern Rome, the east-west road in the photo…
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Tysons Corner turns into a traditional downtown
From ancient times, what made a city a city was how it functioned, not how it looked. And this is especially true today, for we have not built a single old-style downtown from raw dirt in seventy-five years. » (Joel Garreau, Edge City: Life on the New Frontier, Chapter 2) This is how Joel Garreau described…
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Tysons Corner construit son centre-ville
« From ancient times, what made a city a city was how it functioned, not how it looked. And this is especially true today, for we have not built a single old-style downtown from raw dirt in seventy-five years. » (Depuis l’antiquité, ce qui rendait « ville » la ville était son fonctionnement, pas sa forme. Et ça est…
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Lagado and Balinbarbi
The continent, as far as it is subject to the monarch of the flying island, passes under the general name of BALNIBARBI; and the metropolis, as I said before, is called LAGADO. I felt some little satisfaction in finding myself on firm ground. I walked to the city without any concern, being clad like one…
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New shopping area opens in downtown Lausanne
On November 26th, a new shopping area has opened in the Flon area in downtown Lausanne. The new complex includes a supermarket (Migros) and some smaller shops, and is located close to Lausanne-Flon subway station (lines M1, M2 and LEB), making it a perfect example of Transit-Oriented-Development. With the opening of the new complex, Flon…
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Nous sommes dans la suburbia…
Nous sommes dans la suburbia lorsque nous prenons la voiture pour aller acheter notre pain. Nous sommes dans la suburbia là où les livreurs de pizzas errent le soir sans fin dans des rues mal éclairées. Nous sommes dans la suburbia quand tous les bâtiments commencent à ressembler à des stations-services Nous sommes dans la…
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Procedural: City Engine
When the studies from Gianfranco Caniggia meet a powerful rendering engine, this is the result: City engine can be downloaded from here
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Lausanne Metro, Line 2, how it used to be.
For all who wonder how the ancient Lausanne Metro line 2 looked like, here it is: [youtube=http://it.youtube.com/watch?v=h1ST9WLgsoQ
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Lausanne metro line 2: finally open!
This morning, Lausanne Metro line 2 has finally open to the public. In order to celebrate the event, here are some photos of the line: Lausanne-Flon: signs pointing to the platforms Lausanne-Flon: All the lines stopping in Lausanne-Flon are marked with the same fonts, even though they belong to different companies. Lausanne-Flon. Lausanne Metro’s colors scheme: Blue…
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les villages urbains
(photo: Morges, Grand’Rue) Parfois, les villes réservent des bonnes surprises: des centres historiques à l’intérieur des agglomérations, des espaces où la vie tourne à un rythme différent. Dans les agglomérations suisses, construites à partir d’un réseau de villes et villages, ce type de découverte est relativement fréquent , mais dans les grandes métropoles comme Rome,…
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Lausanne Metro line 2: commercial service will start next monday
It’s official: Lausanne Metro line 2 will open next Monday, October 27, 2008. Line Métrobus will be discontinued, all the other lines will remain unchanged until December 14. All the info here and here. (source: 24Heures)
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The 21st Century Medieval City
When we think of medieval cities, we assume it was something like this: while, at that time, it was more likely to be something like this: This is the thesis of Robert Neuwirth, who studied from (and lived in) what he calls « the 21st Century Medieval City ». The video here below shows the results of…
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Shared Space
Two kind of space exist: Roads, regulated by signs, and streets, regulated by social rules. But lots of streets are designed as roads (the so-called « stroads« ). Here is a different approach: Shared space. source: shared space
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Why place matters (Richard Florida)
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Crowdsourcing the eco-district of Lausanne Blécherette: consumption
On september 10, another crowdsourcing session has taken place in Lausanne. This time, the theme was « consuming »: shops, energy, water, wastes. Here is a list of the wishes that came out during the session: – Small independent shops rather than big chain suburban supermarkets (Most of people had few hopes that this would have been…
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from « Adapt the city to cars » to « Adapt the city to social networks »
In 1971, Georges Pompidou said: « Adapter la ville à la voiture » (adapt the city to cars), in a world where people wanted to go faster and further, and reach in a reasonable amount of time more and more places. A new world was born, made of countryside houses, motorways, shopping centers, big buildings: a world…
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Crowdsourcing the eco-district of Lausanne Blécherette: growing up
(source video: OLA Métamorphose) The city of Lausanne is promoting a serie of crowdsourcing sessions for the new eco-district of Pontaise-Blecherette. Last Tuesday I was in the first of them, called « Growing Up », and heard lots of interesting ideas. First of all, people wanted a small-scale district: small roads that will help random meetings, small…
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First we kill the architects
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Lake Geneva region goes metropolitan
Lake Geneva region is turning little by little into a big metropolis, spreading for about 100 km from Geneva to Montreux. Having all the qualities creatives look for, the region is attracting more and more people and enterprises, and is becoming a key place for high-level jobs. And little by little, the different areas…
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How to protect a building against the noise: Croisset Student House in Paris
The Croisset Student House is a good example of how to protect a building from the noise of a motorway and give at the same time a public image to the building. The complex is made of 3 residential blocks, oriented perpendicularly to the motorway, and a continuous screen which runs between the blocks and…
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How to create a private space without using fences
This image (Geneva, square Pradier, via Microsoft Virtual Earth) shows how to create a calm square and give privacy to a block without using fences. The four external buildings act as a screen and separate the square from the through traffic of the surrounding roads. Access to the backside of the external buildings is…
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Public space and human nature
If we think, like Le Corbusier, that human nature is bad, social interactions can only lead us away from the Truth, thus shall be discouraged. A « bad human nature city » will have freeways with no sidewalk, windows on nature, shopping centers with security guards preventing unwanted behaviours… If we think, like Jane Jacobs, that human…
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Lausanne metro: new ticket office opens
The opening of Lausanne metro line 2 gets closer and closer, and the first buildings related to the new line are already opening. On August 4, the new ticket office (designed by Merlini & Ventura architects) opened in the station Flon, where a connection with the existing M1 and LEB lines will be provided. The…
La Ville Nouvelle, Atelier d'Architectes 