ArchShowcase Sumit Singhal
Sumit Singhal loves modern architecture. He comes from a family of builders who have built more than 20 projects in the last ten years near Delhi in India. He has recently started writing about the architectural projects that catch his imagination. Parissy in Paris, France by Malka ArchitectureSeptember 6th, 2011 by Sumit Singhal
Article source: Malka Architecture PARIS + ISSY = PARISSY As infrastructures inhabit and even dominate today’s cities, it is time to accept and give them value. While composed of a poetic vocabulary of sinuous curves and evoking the picturesque, infrastructures have been dedicated to the automobile. Why not offer the richness of this language to pedestrians? Why not organize an open dialectic between vehicles and pedestrians? The sum of abandoned roads, a non-place with a degraded identity, the site is a territory in mutation, with formidable potential owing to its constituent elements; but it requires transformation in order to construct a strong identity.
The first intervention consists in reorganizing circulation flows by creating a roundabout that serves Issy les Moulineaux principally along the axis of the quays by Boulevard Gallieni. It is essential to clearly identify the boundaries of entry to the city in order to understand its thresholds and reinforce the will and desire to enter. The new entry to Issy les Moulineaux will be enhanced through vibrant use. In order to obtain urban clarity, it is important to identify and expose the main view from Paris by reducing the structure of the E05 periphery ring road to increase the visibility of Issy by about 90%. If we consider the premise that infrastructure organizes the city, we are confronted with the question of how to integrate infrastructure to the forms and practices of the city. The active elements of the morphogenesis of this project include the river, the rail, the periphery ring road, and the bank-side expressway. In effect, the project was constituted according this vocabulary, much like a vaccine which contains the virus it attacks. After determining the various disadvantages of the site such as zones of congestion as well as visual and physical restrictions, we created a synthetic equation of different uses. A single line unites the pedestrian flows from the banks of the Seine, both from Paris and Meudon, as well as from the Boulevard Victor RER station for transportation to and from Issy. Establishing the identity of the site requires a strong proposal, marking the will of the site to radiate and strike the collective consciousness. A bridge structure, a veritable vegetal muscle, weaves the major points of the site, directing these points towards the entry to Issy while filtering pollution. The vegetal blade that constitute the structure benefit both pedestrians and cars by intermingling with their immediate context by overhanging, covering the ground, and providing shade as well as moments of discovery. The vegetal elements refer to specific aspects of the site and are oriented by strong urban directives. These elements unite the ensemble, creating a cohesive green ribbon. A vegetal lung, the structure creates a distinct image of the site, varying in density and color depending on the season. Our proposal is to create a landscaped path, resulting from the combination of urbanism, architecture, landscape, and land art. Various scales and multiple uses are articulated within a structural framework, which is not an end in itself but a means of obtaining a coherent language with a plurality of uses. The vegetal curves create changes in texture while adopting the forms of the adjacent infrastructure. This modification of territory gives value to the existing while facilitating the path of the user and the promenade of pedestrian towards Issy. Expanding and contracting, the structure produces a kinetic effect, generating multiple experiential sequences around the pedestrian; the perception of the vegetal blades evolves and its appearance changes progressively. The user traverses planted promenade, vegetal arches, and covered spaces. Vegetal sky, multiplicities of use, and reinvented pleasures of city allow automobile territory to be re-conquered by the pedestrian.
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Category: Public Landscapes |