Vi(e)abiliser
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Project Title
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Project Description
This project, Vi(e)abiliser, is an urban process to implement the milestones of a living, open and adaptable city. A humble preliminary intervention that echoes the current financial stakes and can face the non-binary futures that await us in a serene manner. The first stage of our project is to allow the city to be rebuilt on the natural elements that saw it come into being, with the Artière River flowing through its heart and the Limagne plain preserved as the horizon.
Geographical Scope
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Urban or rural issues
Physical or other transformations
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Description of the project
Summary
This urban project is part of the Europan - Villes Vivantes (Metabolic Vitality - Inclusive Vitality) competition on the site of the town of Aulnat (FR - 63), within the Clermont-Ferrand metropolitan area. The project seeks to reconnect the town with the natural entities surrounding it. The Artière, a river that runs through the town and was canalized in the 1980s to prevent flooding and the agricultural plain of Limagne, which is subject to strong land pressure due to the development of the city. Three high-potential sites are available, close to the city centre and offering rapidly available land. It seemed to us paradoxical but necessary to preserve these empty spaces from a too rapid and not thought-out urbanisation in the long term. Rather than building on them, we must take advantage of these strategic locations to set up the conditions for future projects in the city. We therefore propose to "make them viable", in order to facilitate the conditions for the installation of life in and around the sites. From then on, the three sites proposed by the city become the 'milestones' of the living city. They all have two objectives: to create a unifying natural space to improve the living environment of the inhabitants and users and to manage the technical problems specific to each site in a collective manner. The aim of all these actions is to guide the mutation of the city on itself, facilitating the evolution of housing systems with more contemporary modes. Limiting the urban sprawl. By making the soil permeable and by creating landscaped expansion basins, the city is enabled to be reconnected to its river and to transform the risks of flooding into landscaped amenities. It is a humble and tailor-made intervention to offer new qualities immediately to the inhabitants and to improve the attractiveness of the town by allowing later open developments, public or private.
Key objectives for sustainability
Our urban project is a rapid development of the town of Aulnat to enable it to respond in the long term to current environmental and societal issues. This action focuses on the creation of a virtuous ecosystem aimed at regenerating the soil and reintroducing nature to allow the town to build on itself, around structural voids. The reintroduction of the Artière (the river that runs through Aulnat, channeled in the 1980s) into the heart of the city is central to our proposal. This involves, firstly, the creation of landscaped infrastructures for depollution, in order to improve the quality of this water after its passage through the metropolis and before its course through the Limagne plain, the granary of the Auvergne. In a second phase, we are supporting the creation of landscaped expansion basins to absorb the floods linked to this hydrological entity. These landscaped infrastructures are no longer thought of as isolated technical elements but as real public spaces whose ecosystem evolves according to the seasons and the hydrology. From time to time, they facilitate the establishment of new activities by limiting the risks of flooding and make it easier to reuse vacant buildings. On a city-wide scale, they allow the river to be gradually reopened and new wetlands to be created, thus helping to combat heat islands and global warming. In parallel to these interventions, we propose the creation of an experimental trees nursery on a wasteland, allowing the city to be supplied in the long term with plant specimens adapted to climatic changes. Our project sets back urban and architectural intervention in favour of the creation of rich ecosystems at the interface between key sites. These milestones reintroduce life into the city through new landscape qualities and facilitate the arrival of future projects.
Key objectives for aesthetics and quality
We introduce a new aesthetic into the city: the living aesthetic. We carry out a flexible project in which nature takes its place in order to allow the inhabitants to rediscover their sense of belonging to a territory. The milestones that we create are the result of meticulous work with the context in order to bring out all its qualities and to adapt to its forces. It is embodied by the creation of new topographies more conducive to the management of hydrological hazards and allows the development of a rich fauna and flora. It is accompanied by a planting programme on the scale of the city, allowing its mineral face to be rapidly changed. These milestones, true "urban forests", create a pleasant atmosphere for everyone, notably by attenuating the noise emitted by nearby infrastructures (train station, airport, ring road, etc.) and by fighting against heat islands.
Our project is also based on several existing buildings that are now disused. Rather than demolishing these buildings, we are carrying out a real programme to transform them in order to accommodate new programmes and new uses. This includes the rehabilitation of the Bourbon refinery, whose building quality is recognised, as well as smaller heritage buildings such as the former Claude Félix school. The action on these existing buildings allows the urban project to be inscribed in a historical continuity with the city, facilitating its acceptance by the inhabitants and creating a real aesthetic of the existing elements of the city. Our project is a simple, humble and inexpensive intervention which, in the long term, will radically change the perception of the town of Aulnat.
Key objectives for inclusion
The city of Aulnat is structured by programmatic plates lacking a link between them. Our project acts at the articulation between these different sectors by structuring public interfaces. Thus they offer qualities to each of these neighbours. The spaces designed serve the inhabitants of Aulnat, the daily workers, the students or even the simple passer-by for a day. They offer a variety of uses depending on the time of day and the day of the week. The "station milestone" can thus be a hub for public transport, a pleasant park for workers at lunchtime or an atypical place to eat and party in the evening. The landscape amenities implemented are offered to all, in particular so that the gradual densification of the city is not at the expense of the outdoor spaces of the most disadvantaged people. We place the notion of the extraordinary at the heart of the project, convinced that acting on the daily lives of inhabitants is essential. Above all, all kinds of users can adapt these flexible spaces for different activities (outdoor sports areas, shared spaces, allotments, places to relax, etc.) but they can also host large-scale events (outdoor screenings, concerts, markets, etc.). Our project is the first stone of an open and inclusive process allowing the city of Aulnat to evolve while being attached to its territory. This is why the inhabitants and project leaders (public or private) will be included in the development of the concept. The milestones are a prerequisite for facilitating new projects in the commune. This is already the case today, with the Clermont-Ferrand Auvergne Airport taking advantage of the Europan project to rethink its relationship with the city. Nevertheless, whatever the associations and partnerships to come, it is a project whose qualities are established beforehand so that they benefit everyone, whatever the future of the sites involved.
Physical or other transformations
Innovative character
Our project is a global vision. It is divided into three distinct actions, the "milestones", but each one responds individually to the themes of the competition: Sustainability, Inclusion and Aesthetics.
Each of these interventions is at the service of an overall vision for the city of Aulnat, enabling it to face the future that awaits us in a serene manner. In our opinion, these three points are inseparable. Sustainability is necessary today in order to respond to current environmental and ecological issues. Inclusiveness is essential because of the new qualities of a city reconnected to nature and its territory must be offered to all and allow all actors to participate in a common project. According to us, aesthetics is an opportunity to enhance the value of technical elements that are currently little used by designers because they are too technical and not very gratifying. It is also an opportunity to reposition the living and nature at the heart of our lifestyles. In this respect, our intervention is exemplary in the context of the new European Bauhaus prize, but also on the scale of the Clermont-Ferrand metropolitan area and the town of Aulnat. As the first stone of a future rich in possibilities, it must set an example in order to federate and create new synergies around it.
