City of Future
is... architecture

PROJECT 342

"BRIDGE-BUILDING PANORAMA"

Marc Mimram Architects & Associés

Flowing like a river between Avenue de France and Halle Freyssinet are now more spacious railway lines merging. To the right of the Panorama building, the possible area without intermediate support is 58 meters (190 feet). Elsewhere, the buildings erected on the rail network were built on a thick platform, a concrete table on which any set of buildings in accordance with the rules of urban development can be erected at random without prior planning. Urban planners have abandoned the idea of ​​tabula rasa in favor of a new tabula: a platform waiting to be developed. This approach is irrational and wasteful. In addition, it cannot be transposed to the right of the project because the period is too long as intermediate support is only possible if an expensive reconstruction of the railway infrastructure is carried out. 

Our proposal addresses the problem on the other side. Instead of installing a starter platform, we suggest suspending the platform that forms the roof over the bridge building's rails. This new theory alters the economic equation, allowing the cost of the platform's invisible structure to be included in that of the building superstructure, and this specific geographic arrangement allows for a different type of architecture. As designed, the building thus becomes a bridge construction supported on both sides of the tracks, 58 meters away, with 16,000 tons suspended above the trains. The effect of this structural arrangement is liberating, enabling the particular use of gravitational tensions. As stresses are concentrated on the floors that form the bridge structure, the other parts of the building are free.

Suspended or supported by the main structure, they can vary in thickness and encompass elements such as terraces, balconies, galleries or mezzanines, all different ways of expanding the workspace, depending on orientations and views. This choice of structural design makes it possible to develop comfortable tertiary spaces. The different areas and spaces that extend from office areas open to the city or are traced from it by the use of corbelling. The working areas can enjoy these extensions, shared or purchased individually. Paradoxically, these very generous arrangements are the result of the structural constraints of the bridge design and the resolution of the railway problem by integrating the roof over the rails into the design rather than using an inefficient support platform that would only increase the overall performance of the bridge. project cost. Architecture gains in coherence and the structure itself is implicit without drawing attention to itself. The railway lines below will disappear along with the entire network under the new construction, but the method used will still remember its presence. The main bridge beams are concentrated on the floors with perforated facades in a pattern reminiscent of the Vierendeel beams used. The terraces included in the suspended or supported floors vary freely. Both the memory of the manufacturing process and that of the workplace are embodied in an architecture that does not necessarily show off its muscles but reveals itself without camouflage, without obscuring its initial determining geographical condition. The project emerged from this coherent view; its realization became architecture.

 

REGAINING THE URBAN HORIZON

 

The tertiary project developed between Bibliothèque de France and Halle Freyssinet crosses the railway lines. This is not to ignore the urban landscape to which the exact opposite belongs. In our opinion, the bridge formed by the project anchors it in the 13th arrondissement (French town), a magnificent geographical and built topography stretching from the towers of Porte d'Italie on the horizon towards Butte aux Cailles, between the Gobelins and La Salpertrière, and in the distance Ivry and Gentilly.  All these places can be seen quite well from the building, by talking to it and establishing its architecture: in return, we offer this panorama.

The project occupies a specific place in the development of the Paris Rive Gauche area, and particularly along Avenue de France. To the northeast, it overlooks the towers of the Bibliothèque de France, towards the Parc de Bercy, on an axis with the footbridge over the Seine. This link is particularly significant because it marks a slope here and anchors the new Rive Gauche on the roads of the 13th arrondissement of the past. Taking the constraints of the bridge structure as a starting point, the project seeks to create new conditions for the use of a tertiary building. It is the intention to dialogue with the city regarding these new conditions of use. Our structural and morphological research was guided by these considerations. The project seeks to take advantage of its exceptional structure rather than building artwork in order to generate exceptional situations. The structure required for crossing the railway lines gives the envelope great freedom and, given the location-specific opportunities and the views it offers, allows you to include places of use aimed at the surrounding cityscape: continuous balconies, double height spaces, terraces and framed views.

 

THE ENVIRONMENT AS A CONDITION OF USE

 

We would like to see dialogue with the city as a central feature of project development. The building here is not only aligned with others, but is also part of a remarkable perspective. The city, the horizon, the sky and also the lights and directions are all environmental conditions, and we want them to direct the new tertiary uses proposed by the project.

The particular situation of bridge construction makes it possible to create separate structures from extension elements, large 58-meter bridge beams, suspended and supported elements. Thanks to the difference of these elements of the larger structures, terraces, double height spaces and galleries can be inserted between the structural elements. Tertiary occupation may deviate from its geometric logic (1.35 meters (4.4 feet) long by 18 meters (59 feet) wide, with a central section erased to discover new dimensions, ranging from 6 to 19 meters (9.6 to 62.3 feet) wide, two-way offices and free levels with different external facades or extensions.

Our goal is to reevaluate conditions and take advantage of the freedom offered by such structures to design new working conditions in the tertiary sector. The office world has become very limited by rules. Here we have the opportunity to innovate by offering a variety of new, adaptable and different ways of working. Moving away from the traditional office style, here we can create workplaces that open to the city, expanded by shared spaces, horizontal spaces for socializing, such as covered terraces or vertical mezzanine-shaped balconies.

Our project paves the way and encourages new styles of work in the tertiary sector, promoting living in the workplace and creating arrangements that bring people together in the best possible conditions. The building uses the constraints imposed by its bridge structure to create variations in use. The environmental quality here is derived from the different uses, orientations and openings in the city skyline. The project develops and takes shape according to the possibilities offered by the structure for its orientation in the urban landscape.

 

STABILIZED EQUILIBRIUM

 

The need to design a structure to cross the railroad tracks below may have resulted in a compact and massive building, supported by previously built supports, but we decided on a different approach. We use gravity, with its ability to create sophisticated clusters, constructing a rib structure rising from ground level, suggesting a "stabilized equilibrium".

The load-bearing elements are of two types, those that bridge the railway below are different from those used for the transverse portals. Although all load-bearing elements are indivisible, they appear to be separate from each other. They are gathered in the heart of the building, on the new staircase that has the function of transferring the vertical load.

The idea was basically to make a building suspended. The bridge structure was not simply the result of the need to cover a wide area; It was also a liberating element, where the directions of the protruding main beams offer various aspects and arrangements. Apparently disconnected, the large beams are assembled to provide portals and structural compositions, stabilized around the central newels, the structural load being absorbed by two brackets installed on Avenue de France and along the tree-lined southern walkway.

We did not want an extreme form of structural expressionism. We wanted to use the strength of the bridge elements needed for the project. The structure here serves the dialogue between urban life and use. It is the structure that frees the landscape and generates a variety of uses. The suspended mass of these great structural elements leads us to think of the gravitational forces, but in a way that is more sensitive to the pleasures of the place and more generous about the pleasure of being taken from there.

The treatment of the façade is inspired by the duality of supporting elements and supported elements. The bridging elements reveal the constraints imposed on them in a single massive envelope pierced in a rhythm echoing the curves of forces traversing the facade beam. Suspended or balanced parts that are adjusted between weight bearing volumes are an expression of an absence of restrictions. Its extreme lightness is expressed in a glass skin or a simple and unique curtain wall. The contrast between these two types of envelopes puts the weight bearing elements in a suspended situation.

The supports are an important aspect of the project. They are geometrically predefined for position and size. To avoid making them the most important feature of a project that is more concerned with their relationship with the city and the need to adapt to passerby scale, the brackets are integrated into an arrangement that resembles a large-scale environment. stabilized. equilibrium and locally combines the charge transfer with a simple geometric shape. The ability is visible, but not omnipresent. The order in which the building can be read defines it within the city scale.

 

PERFORMANCE AT THE SERVICE OF THE GENEROUS CITY

 

The equation may seem disturbing: a bridge building that crosses the railways by 58 meters in length is not. The structural feature is liberating! The crossing allows to create unique spaces, freeing the offices from the limitation of the picture, freeing the user from the spatial norm of the work. The structure fixes the large spans, but at the same time frees all placed or suspended spaces that are associated with it. The city offers itself as a magnificent field of vision from the offices and their extensions.  According to the orientations of the 13th arrondissement panorama and to the north of Parc de Bercy, the panoptic view of offices and terraces enters the workplace as a condition for a renewed organization. We propose with this project to establish a dialogue between city and work. Pleasure of the place, pleasure of staying there, pleasure of living there.

The conditions of this recovered urbanity are composed on all scales:

- On the distant horizon of Bercy Park, between the BNF towers or dive into the rue du Chevaleret, level line, urban jetty joining the 13th arrondissement to the banks of the Seine. From Avenue de France, the corridor of the lined buildings opens here, to the sky above the construction of the cinemas, as the planted walkway is the garden that penetrates into the equilibrium volumes to provide the “inner courtyard”. The garden evokes the presence of the basement, not in the slab but in the thickness of the ground that emerges from the heart of the crossing and flush structure with the passerby before vertically joining the overlapping terraces. To evoke the abstraction of the soil, we give it a gardening. This idea of ​​a landscaped environment is everywhere in the project, on every terrace: everywhere accessible, everywhere, participating in new conditions for living the place and the building. From the streets, the passerby is a resident, he can benefit from the building as a filter space, but cozy in dialogue with the city.

The project we propose is generous:

- generous in the way you share the place,

- generous to offer the city and offer on all scales, always changing according to guidelines;

- generous in the way it offers new living conditions in the workplace.  

We propose to take advantage of the rail restriction so as not to create a “tabula nova” absent from the territory, a slab on which a building would be built regardless of the initial conditions.

We show here how fertile these conditions are.

 

Photography: Camille Gharbi

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Quinta da Beloura
2710 - 693 Sintra, Portugal





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