Renewal of the Croix-Saint-Lambert neighbourhood – SAINT-BRIEUC (Côtes-d’Armor)
RetourCompletion year 2016
Contracting Authority Municipality of Saint-Brieuc
Mission Renewing the neighbourhood as part of the French National Agency for Urban Renewal scheme
Project Management Team Consulting engineers SAFEGE (mandated agent), Landscape architects and designers Laure Planchais, Town-planning architects Sylvie Cahen. Based on a prior master scheme produced by town-planning architect Daniel Kahane
Surface area 9 hectares
Budget €6m exc. VAT
Ratio €67 exc. VAT per m²
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.