TOA architects

ITINERARY

Thierry Maire, Olivier Méheux and Alain Oesch are the winners of Europan 3, “At home in the city”, in 1993 on the Mulhouse site (F), which culminated in the first commission: the social residence Les Chaudronniers, on an other site in the same city. Profiting of this first order, they create their office, TOA architectes.
All graduated from the Strasbourg Higher National School of Arts and Industries in 1990, and through a variety of professional experiences have come to share a joint perception of the land, the city and of architecture.
TOA architectes exploited the synergy of that first decade with the opening of two studios: Paris and Strasbourg. A dual location which underlines a team dynamic in a wide range of fields (teaching, urban design, architecture) and a range of applications.
The pooling of experience and a joint conception of architectural and urban projects now feed the development of a powerful team spirit. An approach that filters each project through permanent examination of the nature of modern development and a sensitive assessment of every operation.

INTENSITY

At town or neighbourhood scale, the approach to the city is often governed by the legacy of individual places that are connected together. The land is punctuated with events whose intensity revitalises the value of the landscape and connects it with its environment.

Mulhouse (F) - Shopping dynamic

After developing self-sufficiently on the periphery of the dense urban groupings, shopping has once again become part of the composition of the town.
The verticality of the tower block and the horizontality of the “square” are mutually reinforcing, symbolising the two components of urban refurbishment: the signal and the journey. The unusual faceted geometry transforms the relationship between tower and ground, and structures the shopping routes. A theatrical high note at the heart of the project, an operation designed to be clear in terms both of the site and of the challenges it presents.

NARRATIVE

The formalisation of the project distills new ambiences. Inspired by a general context (programme, site, participants, etc.) and its interpretation, the narrative, the story, the imagination is a source of intuition that allies the nature of the object with the meaning of the project.

Schirmeck (F) - Memorial

Referring to the history of Alsace-Moselle, which evokes a “buffer region”, the memorial draws its identity from the site’s powerful landscape value. The emergence of an artificial boundary becomes the pretext for the poetic expression of the region, a line in the landscape. The “pathways”, the “rooms” (1 view) and the “wings” (through-views) offer different levels of interpretation, which leave visitors free to manage their visits

HERITAGE

Spacetime is one of the founding dimensions of European cities, which continuously build their own history and legacy layer upon layer. Apart from its aesthetic value, heritage is a dynamic link between the past and future city.

Strabourg (F) - University library

This library is an opportunity to regenerate the public spaces and facades of the urban boulevard, as it prepares for the installation of the new tramline. In the process of thinking about transport methods, the initial programme was revised to add parking for 250 bicycles.
In the shadow of the existing building, the roof provides parking for the bicycles and offers a new emblematic image to represent the institution.

THRESHOLD

In the modern city, public space is replacing building distribution as a way of maintaining urban continuities. Nevertheless, private space defines the limits of public territory, interfaces that contribute to the way people take ownership of and share urban territory.

Grenoble (F) - Dwelling in the year 2000

The study site crosses three areas with varied qualities and land opportunities, which demand different strategies. These include the possibility of looking at the city in terms of its immediate transformations: suburban areas are the ideal place for this. It is not so much a question of controlling and regulating an inadequate constructional form in a complex land layout, as of proposing extensions to the housing space to provide the conditions required for alternative contemporary housing.

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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