La Baie rest area – PLOMB (Manche)
RetourCompletion year 2004
Contracting Authority French Government
Mission Creating a rest area (without shops)
Project Management Team NR consulting engineers (mandated agent), Architect Jean-Marc Viste (buildings), Landscape architects and designers Laure Planchais, Landscape architects and designers Agnès Sourisseau (metal viewing machines)
Surface area 718 hectares
Budget €3m exc. VAT
Ratio €17 exc. VAT per m²
The site borders on a plateau and the Saultbesnon stream valley. Within that sector, the motorway is at an altitude ranging from 3 to 12 metres below the natural terrain. The valley and the edge of the plateau provide a wooded background setting that frames the view over the Mont Saint-Michel and its bay. Since we had to reuse 80,000 cubic metres of backfill from the motorway construction, it was necessary to create two foundations in relation to the plateau.
A lookout was made on the eastern part, overlooking the Mont Saint-Michel. It followed the direction of the planned footbridge, linking a hiking trail to the south-east and a pathway crossing the Saultbesnon stream to the north-east.
To the west, the platform got a lookout overlooking the motorway and making use of the entire length of the site. The axis of the footbridge is designed to limit vehicular traffic, thereby enhancing pedestrian uses and promoting safety across most of the site. The toilet facilities are in a small building, lined up with that axis. An alley of oaks emphasises the site’s main lines. Inspired from orchards and shrubs, a “domestic” tree corridor plays a part in rekindling the bonds with the surrounding farmland.
By inserting the parking spots into the site’s tree structures, we succeeded in not only reducing their visual impact, but also in improving user comfort (shade, peace and quiet).
Feedback (last visit in 2009)
- The grassy seating set within the lawn was put in service too early, so it was removed and replaced with standard picnic furniture.
- The rest area’s grassy sloping bank to the south, which was supposed to blend in with the surrounding countryside, has been covered over with a plastic tarpaulin planted with pink spirea… the excuse being upkeep concerns! Why didn’t they let the neighbour’s cows come and mow the slope, whose top part is protected by a wire fence integrated into a hedge? After all, that would have been free!
- The ugly pink freedom headstone which had been erected there, even though there was no good reason for its presence since neither the motorway nor the rest area were around for D-Day, was eventually vandalised… and I was most relieved about that. All the same I was grateful, for it allowed me to find out about an unknown episode in my family history. Nevertheless, I am not particularly fond of historical fabrication, nor do I like works of dubious aesthetic merit made by a sculptor whose claim to fame was to have made a bust of Mussolini and one of Pétain. History can sometimes produce strange turnarounds.
- The tutors supporting the trees have not been removed.