• Creating a vast esplanade linking the university buildings on both sides of Rue Henri Wallon
• Aligning the built facades, to be constructed upon the gymnasium and at a diagonal to the existing buildings
• Enhancing the wooded strip along national highway RN12 and creating a link between the future car park to the south of the UIT and the esplanade
• Distancing and protecting the low-rise housing to the north using a planted strip
• Creating a parking space included within the Nursing School’s future building (either half-buried or on ground level)
• Connecting the esplanade with existing buildings and with the main pedestrian thoroughfares on the campus
• Taking into account the planned long-term extension to the local town-planning scheme (PLU) for the low-rise housing adjacent to the IUT

Based on the master plan established during the preparatory phase, the first lot includes the creation of a vast, triangular public esplanade in the centre of the site, intended to unify existing and future buildings (a project is planned for the Nursing School). The space is designed in such a way as to maintain a smooth flow of people and to host open-air events, as well as providing micro-gardens dotted here and there to foster peace and quiet and conviviality. Those gardens will feature striking artificial topographies and miniature tree plantations complete with their undergrowth. The esplanade stretches to the foot of the facades across the street, forming a semi-pedestrian platform. A plant-lined ditch will buffer all of the new landscaping’s rainwater.

Located in the historic centre of Alençon, the site includes 3 entities: a venerable religious institution teaching deaf-mutes, its outbuildings, and a public square, the whole linked by the bordering Sarthe River.
The facing riverbank will host a planned bus terminal, currently in the design phase and to be completed concurrently to this project (Project-managed by Sogetti).
The intent is to reinforce and encourage urban daily walking (to or from the market, the bus terminal and the shopping strips) as well as providing a setting for events and a tourist presence, especially making use of the continuity to be created along the Sarthe. This was outlined in a guide plan prior to the consultation (with architect Paul Ravaux).
The composition encompasses the predictable logic underlying these kinds of trails, highlighting the surrounding monuments and the traces that show how the Sarthe River and the city have evolved across the site (the former riverbed before it was channelled and the ancient battlements).
We completed a footbridge across the Sarthe River to spare the core of the site and to provide a powerful urban anchor. Made of irregular metal mesh, the footbridge lets through glimpses of the surrounding site, expressing a contemporary take on lace as it generates an intense interplay of light and shade. The footbridge’s metal frame is adorned with small ironwork elements.
To the north of the site there is a phenology garden with white flowers evoking the kinds of floral and leafy motifs that have inspired Alençon lace.
Lastly, the project is also deploying alphabetical sculptures representing sign language patterns (hands made of bronze set in a stand, moulded from the students and teachers at the Providence institution), also translated into braille, as an entertaining tribute the site’s educational past.

Feedback (last visit in 2016)

• Densely veined robinia boards have proven to be ineffective against slippage. This will be resolved by adding a corundum seal.
• Children are spontaneously using the slabs dotting the lawn for games that are half-way between hopscotch and leapfrog
• Children and adults have fun reproducing the letters in French sign language whenever they walk past the hand sculptures.
• The motif used for the footbridge has inspired the design of the municipality’s New Year’s Day cards 2016!

As part of a major renewal of the neighbourhood (demolished buildings, refurbished retail, public facilities and housing, new buildings, the initiation of social diversity), special attention was given to how much effort would go to working on the position of pedestrians within public spaces.
The public spaces renewal project relies on the strategy used in creating major public spaces that promote a diversified population with surrounding neighbourhoods, even with the town centre. The project extends the existing weekly market, creating a vast esplanade which turns into an open-air amphitheatre. This gives a real “hub-feel” to the neighbourhood by including the school, the municipal library, the social centre and the shops which play a decisive role in social bonding. Along the esplanade, a huge children’s playground further contributes to livening up the neighbourhood.
Parking spots are included near the homes, with the accent being put on quality. They are covered with honeycomb-shaped concrete slabs to improve rainwater storage within the area so as to avoid overloading the water mains while still obeying aesthetic concerns, since the slabs are gradually covered in grass.
The project provides garden transitions between the main public spaces and the building sides. Those small garden plots separate the ground floors from pedestrians and vehicles, making buildings more comfortable and fostering conviviality inside every building.
The project management team suggested setting up buried containers to collect household waste, including a prior educational visit to the municipality of Brest for advice.

Feedback (last visit in 2016)

• Certain residents have taken ownership of those spaces by adding their own plants to the plantations and taking care of them.
• There are mixed results regarding the pockets of succulent plants in the gabions. The Sempervivum arachnoideum seems the most suitable plant for this exercise!
• A colony of starlings took their winter quarters in the existing pine grove, and they destroyed most of the trees with the sheer quantity of droppings.
• The neighbourhood has served as a pilot regarding the buried containers to collect household waste. The experiment was a success and so the system is being deployed throughout the municipality of Saint-Brieuc.

This forecourt is part of a strategy to display a street side profile featuring the renewal of the administrative building and of the new media library/multi-purpose venue intended for both the school and the town.
We chose an aesthetic approach that tells of an exotic journey through the travelling world of the famed Doctor Félix Le Dantec, and which takes advantage of the Lannion region’s very gentle micro-climate.
The project has turned the forecourt into a raised platform, an urban plaza suited to the welcoming of visitors to the school and the media library. Its configuration provokes an incentive to slow down, successfully meeting the demand for a “landscaped” area through a network of flowerbeds dotted with shrubs, shimmering perennials and local pink granite blockfield.
The area to the back of the school was refurbished into a clearly marked car park, in a bid to optimise the space.
The front of the school now features a kiss & ride/bus stop zone and provides a new land limit indicated by a discrete fence that blends in visually with the plantations.

Feedback (last visit in 2014)

• Thanks to the sheer bulk of perennials and fine growing conditions overall, the result was highly spectacular as early as summertime in the initial year of plantation.
• The reinforced asphalt, being too heavily spread on the road (managed by the Lannion municipality), has suffered some light wear and tear.
• The area appears to be well attended and popular among the students.

The site used to be a quarry, which was turned successively into a rubbish tip then into a “theatre of greenery” with rugged terrain, located within the Mare aux Moines low-rise residential neighbourhood bordering on Chartres. A housing estate adjacent to the site has failed to find a buyer because the land is polluted, unstable and very noisy on account of the traffic on the orbital bypass. This neglected space, plagued by both the lack of urban connections and the old-fashioned layout was causing the site to be cut off from the outside. Given the need to contain the pollution throughout the site, the project delivered a substantial landscape renewal that completely changed the site’s image. To begin with, it involved entirely taking over the abandoned estate and working to open it up to the outside by creating a host of pathways across the site’s unusual topography, thereby shaping direct links with the neighbourhood. The former amphitheatre was partly filled in, forming a kind of “volcano” open to the sky and to the distant horizon, with a trail around its summit where strollers can enjoy the characteristic vegetation grown inside the crater (bulbs). The slopes feature a basic children’s playground made from local cyclopean rock.
Existing forested areas were cleared, leaving only certain species (wild cherry trees and pine trees). The new tree plantations provide a very singular setting since the chosen colours are not often found in nature, featuring extremely bright foliage (white bark and foliage of gold, pink or mixed hues). The plants were chosen while in their early growth period so they could better adapt to the terrain’s highly delicate conditions. On the other hand, the protections (tutors and netting) were very colourful to provide spectacular visuals right away once the project was completed.
A holding basin was created to buffer the neighbourhood’s rainwater which was causing problems, as well as the water flowing from the park. The basin made it possible to recreate a semi-wild area to show all around that the site had reclaimed its environmental quality.

Feedback (last visit in 2013)

• The limited budget did not allow for very comfortable pathways (natural gravel) for the strollers, who tend to be rather urban (pushchairs, the postman’s bike).
• The children’s games that were initially set up (small rocks with climbing handles) have been replaced since the project’s completion with a more standard playground (set on soft ground and featuring spring-mounted games).
• The very poor condition of the soil is not helping the plants to grow.
• The rainwater filtering basin is functioning perfectly, producing abundant biomass which, however, does not facilitate its upkeep.

The growth of the Sables-d’Or-les-Pins seaside resort was interrupted by the economic crisis in the 1930s, leaving the high street and seafront unfinished. While the area has many assets to offer, they are virtually unnoticeable from the two primary thoroughfares:

• Unusual geological features combining pink granite bedrock, an estuary, a marsh and a range of coastal dunes
• A bold urban masterplan relying on a host of structural planted spaces and quality architectural elements

The project aimed at expressing that diversity along the seafront and the high street by using a vocabulary that reinterprets the existing surrounding landscape and architecture. The entire road network was reduced to make it easier for pedestrians to cross the street, to slow down traffic and to clear vast stretches of grassy roadside verges dotted with pine trees.
The seafront was also restored to pedestrians by redistributing the parking spots within the resort, which consequently encouraged tourists to explore the area’s architectural and landscaped features. A large pedestrian plaza highlights the role of the two primary thoroughfares and puts the focus on the resort’s key attraction: the promenade along the beach, the casino, the green framed by cypresses and the monumental hexagonal arcade building.
In terms of synergy, special efforts in signage and some lighting have boosted the landscaping project, especially when it comes to the entrances to the resort. Similarly, this enhances the shopping aspect of the high street as well as the night time uses specific to seaside resorts.

Feedback (last visit in 2013)

• The planted spaces are not being properly managed, despite a detailed user manual
• Tutors have still not been removed 6 years after planting!
• Leafy plants have been compressed like shrubs.
  • Grassy parking spots are not refreshed
• The resin used for ground markings has a short lifespan
• The sculpture in the plaza was removed. The plaza is now dotted with giant multi-coloured plastic flowerpots… Unfortunately, they are not artworks by Jean-Pierre Reynaud!