L'AUC architects urban

ITINERARY

François Decoster, Djamel Klouche et Caroline Poulin, winners of Europan 5, “new housing landscapes”, on the Villetaneuse site in France, developed after their ideas in several urban studies and a project of housing on the site.
They created l’AUC (1996) + l’AUC as (2005), two structures that operate in complementary fields: urban planning for l’AUC, project management for l’AUC as. The office starts from the principle that practising urbanism is not a springboard to architectural project management, but rather an active process of understanding and transforming our environment.
The architects acknowledge the discontinuity of the city and seek to create islands of quality within it. They believe that a site should be analysed and reinterpreted in relation to both the local and regional scale, not simply as a physical space, but as a social and cultural context to which the project must belong, as a generator of urban intensification. Since 1996, they have worked on many architectural and urban locations in France, Germany, Asia and Algeria.

DENSITY + DIVERSITY

Metropolitan urbanity: for metropolitan architectures of density, diversity and originality, as Jacques Lévy would say, carrying the genes of urban transformations - past, present and future - of the city.

Paris left bank (F) - From void to full space

The operational pressure on the Tolbiac-Chevaleret sector, added to the form of urbanisation introduced by the platform, exposes this “empty urban space” to the risk of a likely eradication of horizons [towards the Seine, towards the 13th arrondissement’s skyscraper skyline, towards the railway cluster, etc.] and qualities such as the integrity of the Sernam building in its counterbalance to the Bibliothèque de France urban event. How can an “empty urban space” be turned into a “full urban space” with the best possible qualities? What architectural, urban and landscape methods can be used to redistribute and reinterpret the uses, practices and routines identified?

INSULARITIES

Communication between the small and large scales: it is possible to construct project (strategies from the bottom up) starting with the local or micro potential and extending to the large-scale regional structure.

Rennes (F) - The city by the water

The development proposal for the Baud-Chardonnet wasteland involves a particular form of urbanisation based on insularity (turning the city back to the water) and a new mode of inhabitation (prioritising a “residentiality” that reflects a precise connected between “inhabitation” and territoriality).
A contrasted urban landscape is created by varying heights of the building and gradations of density that allow light to penetrate the blocks and the street.

RESIDENTIALITY

Domestic/Geographic: how do we enhance residential quality whilst generating urbanity of the most inventive kind? Going from inside the house to outside, from the most domestic habits to actions and events on the broadest territorial scale.

Rouen (F) - Scale and coherency

The size of the site, the significance of the building legacy and the tightness of the budget have focused the project on a strategy of multiple interventions.
Enhancing the quality of the existing housing ; Treating the ground to emphasise the site’s natural topography for a better rainwater management ; Creating micro-spaces with graduated uses ; Developing a more urban relation between the residential complex and the big central structures of Rouen Heights ; Restoring original scale and coherence.

DISCREET PLANNING

Potentials and intensifications: Ii many circumstances, it is pointless to try to control a changing area in its entirety. It is preferable to focus the plan’s effectiveness and intensity on the most strategic sections, with the most potential.

Reunion Island (F) - Around the tram-train

A consideration of the metropolitan area centre identified several strategic priorities for the project around a tram-train and its stations:
1. 50,000 dwellings over the next 20 years. Giving the residential function a dominant and exemplary role. 2. A multipolar centre. 3. The landscapes as intrinsic values of the area that contribute to its lasting quality. 4. A hippodrome. 5. A real seaside resort, development of a marina, reappropriation of the ocean.

Europan Generation, The reinterpreted city Catalogue
Editions: Cité de l’architecture and Europan, May 2007
224 colour pages, bilingual English/French


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