Concevoir à grande échelle

Mathieu Louis Pierre Mercuriali
EPFL, 2015
EPFL thesis

Abstract

Large-scale design - Mobility interface models and urban transformation strategies This research project is based on the hypothesis that the urban transformations generated by mobility interfaces constitute a key component of successful sustainable urban development. Effectively visioning and understanding these multimodal interchange hubs must therefore become a major strategic objective, in order to conceive an urban model that is compact - and networked and intelligent. With this aim in mind, this research aims to propose innovative strategies for transforming these communication interfaces into central reference points within the contemporary metropolitan landscape. Projects of this kind have already been designed and realised in most major European cities during the second half of the 20th century. These designs, characterised by their complexity and scale, formed the starting point of the major railway stations in today's cities, incorporating different forms of mobility over the course of time. Today they appear not just detached from their urban contexts - the very contexts in which they are embedded - but also unable to meet the current demand for functional mixity and communication effectively. They are undergoing obsolescence and finding it difficult to adapt to the paradigm shifts that have intervened - socially, economically and spatially. At a time when the city can no longer be conceived exclusively in terms of ex-nihilo construction, but must be viewed in terms of transforming an existing built fabric, what future can be proposed for these existing transport interfaces? What strategies can be developed to anchor them in their surrounding urban context? What capacity do they have for hosting new activities, new public and private spaces? Finally, what forms is it possible to imagine for this kind of design? Three hypotheses emerge: the development of mobility interfaces has generated specific architectural and urban forms correlating to the evolution of mobility forms themselves; the transformation and obsolescence phases of mobility interfaces offer potentials for metropolitan regeneration; and the process of producing a complex design calls for articulation and interrelation between different architectural and urban scales. To verify these hypotheses, the first part of this thesis is focused on the comprehension and analysis of these multimodal hubs, based on a review of architectural and urban theories that address the issue of how major urban projects relate to transport infrastructures. This is followed by close analysis of a series of relevant case studies within the Paris metropolitan area. The second part of the thesis proposes design tools to generate new urban and architectural design processes, derived from a process of design-based research. The final part of the thesis aims to demonstrate that this type of intervention is a design project with its own specific scale and complexity: between large building and urban fragment.

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Mathieu Louis Pierre Mercuriali
EPFL, 2015
EPFL thesis

Abstract

Official source

https://infoscience.epfl.ch/record/212926?ln=en

About this result

Related concepts (20)

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Related publications (76)

Related publications

Related publications (76)

Entre ville et campagne

Sophie Lufkin

Environmental, social and economic concerns linked to the sustainable development of the built-up environment are increasingly calling into question models of territorial development based on urban sprawl. This is because the process of dispersed urbanization generates social inequalities; it is based on the extensive use of automobiles, and leads to increased spending on infrastructure networks. This phenomenon tends to be explained by the search for a combination of life in the city and life in the wide-open which creates new life-styles based on the extensive use of transportation and communication systems. The analysis of these emerging practices indicates that they arise from a double pressure exerted on the population: on one hand, attraction to rural and mountain areas, and on the other hand the economic and cultural dependency vis-à-vis the large urban centers. In this context, the regeneration of urban wasteland areas appears to be a strategy capable of favoring a better anchoring between urbanization and public transport. The dynamics of off-shoring enterprises has freed up a large number of plots that are however connected to existing networks, and benefit from good accessibility and sometimes enviable centrality. The requalification of industrial wasteland has been the object of much research in the nineties, which has led to establish as principles density, mixed use and the preservation of the industrial heritage (for instance Escher-Wyss in Zurich-West, Sulzer in Winterthur, ABB in Baden, SIP in Plainpalais-Geneva). In the same way, following the abandonment of some mobility structures, research has started to focus on the fate of urban railroad wastelands. These are considered to be strategic locations to develop "compact cities", attractive for habitat and favorable for the development of social and cultural activities. Several examples in Switzerland illustrate these attempts: Ecoparc in Neuchâtel, Zurich HB, La Praille in Geneva, etc. Today, in order to offer alternatives to the urban paradigm of the compact city we focus our attention on a different type of railroad wasteland. By regional railroad wasteland we refer to areas located close to a train station, either abandoned or in the process of being abandoned, and situated in suburban or periurban zones. Though these regional railroad wastelands present advantages similar to those of the urban wastelands in terms of accessibility to public transport, they are very different by their relationship to the landscape and nature. In addition, much more affordable land prices than in city centers allow more flexibility in the choice of programs and target users. In line with the thinking led by Thomas Sieverts among others, we attempt to go beyond the antagonisms between city and country, by formulating the hypothesis that these regional railroad wastelands bring an answer that is able to reconcile the aspirations to life in the country with the requirements of sustainable territorial development. The present research aims to explore a series of urbanism strategies induced by the simultaneous and inseparable presence of the railroad and natural dimensions, which constitutes the specificity of these periurban and suburban sites. In a first phase, in order to reveal these specific characteristics we conducted a typology exercise on a sample of thirty railroad sites located on the Geneva to Sankt-Gallen axis. It extends the whole length of the country from Lake Geneva in the southwest to Lake Constance in the northeast and goes through the main city areas of the country as well as several so-called calm areas. These thirty wastelands were measured, photographed, described, analyzed and finally represented according to an innovative methodology that combines architectural, urbanism and sociological approaches. This first phase concludes with the construction of the "face" of each site; beyond the fundamental distinction between urban and regional wastelands, it leads to the identification of six individual types. In a second phase, the focus moves to the project process. In order to understand precisely the mechanisms and the stakes at play, we have analyzed several case studies of urban wastelands in various stages of advancement, going from construction finished (Zurich-West), to the beginnings of the launch of a project (Fribourg), the first stages of construction (Zurich Stadtraum-HB) and planning in the course of development (Lausanne-Malley). We thus show the main obstacles to development, then the levers, triggers or planning instruments capable of surmounting them. Finally, in the last part, we elaborate development scenarios up to 2025 for three regional wastelands of the Lake Geneva urban hub, which come from a distinct group within the typology: Versoix, La Plaine and Palézieux. The project recognizes two scales of intervention: the train station and its immediate surroundings on one hand, and the extended perimeter on the other hand, which includes land within a 500 meter radius around the station. The developments of these two perimeters are intimately linked: the creation of a pole of urbanization may induce an improvement of the rail service and vice-versa. These two embedded scales thus constitute a complex dynamic system, within which specific, though coordinated urbanism strategies are implemented, and the stakes proper to each perimeter dictate these. For the station and its immediate surroundings, the goal is primarily to increase the hospitability of the site, that is principally to increase the symbolic role of the station, to plan the equipment and infrastructure necessary in view of the increased flows of travelers, and arranging the external space by accentuating the presence of vegetation, in agreement with the local character. All of these interventions lead to the creation of a "railroad landscape" which is the regional counterpart to the urban public space. Within the extended perimeter, the project strategy rests upon the recognition of five complementary qualities: inhabited, equipped, wild, productive, to be contemplated, whose proportions vary according to the territorial insertion of the wasteland. Densification is then effected in a punctual and targeted manner, in coherence with the logic resulting from the encounter between rail and nature.

EPFL2010

Densité et logement collectif

Nicolas Bassand

As a measurement, built density (coefficient of land surface to be built and total floor space) has been the object of numerous researches on urban morphology and architectural forms during the twentieth century. However, for the last ten years, its sensory and qualitative dimension seems to be particularly valued: the perceived density. In multi-unit housing, dense, innovating and compact forms show a significant change of architectural and urban conception. In fact, project practices seem to have been marked by three major changes. Firstly, the importance of the precept of sustainable development, attempting at reducing urban sprawl. Secondly, the increased interest in urban values and the idea of "building a city within a city". Lastly, the current asserted need to redefine density: on one hand, new means are being researched to control it, on the other hand there is a widening of its definition due to the main impulse of architects and researchers. Within this framework, it is illuminating to reconsider the multiple disciplines using this term, as well as the distinct spatial scales tackled in this notion and changes in its use through time. However, focusing only on built density, the present research concentrates on the architectural and urban framework, also known as physical density. It is measured by a density figure but is also qualified by the perception of density. We propose as preliminary approach, an examination of this perceived density in fields where it is more frequently used, such as literature, painting and music. Another important notion of this research requires definition: architectural and urban innovation. Standing out from pure invention, this type of innovation consists essentially in a reinterpretation of previous architectural and urban productions worth naming "retro-innovation". Despite a housing program dependent on past models reluctant to rapid and important changes, radical innovations do occur, though more seldomly. Several ''moments'' of the collective housing architectural history allow for an updating of the different stakes manifested in the density – innovation relationship. Density perception plays a large role in a particular problem emerging from these two notions in contemporary Switzerland. The issue is how encouraging people coming back to the urban centers by proposing larger apartments with more square meters and urban architecture composed of numerous and various spaces, but protecting them at the same time from too close a proximity between neighboring housing and from environmental nuisances. The state of the art brings to light the enormous influence of the researcher and anthropologist Amos Rapoport on perceived density starting with his article, "Towards a Redefinition of Density", published in 1975. For more than thirty years now, architects, psychologists, city planners and geographers refer to this work when defining this notion in their respective fields. As a consequence, it nourishes several reflections in this research. Following these various observations, we propose the analysis of fourteen contemporary multi-unit buildings. They represent the current urban stakes at play and show the architectural and urban conception facing the double requirement of density: to insure a high enough floor area ratio (measured density) and to qualify the housing density (perceived density). In parallel, this research determines if this conception, unique to dense multi-unit housing, tends to modify architectural practice. In the first phase, we examine seven rectangular housing units, in which the width of the building is significant, and seven courtyard buildings in order to examine the exterior spaces contained by the building's volumes. In the second phase, we focus our attention on the wall expression of the fourteen buildings. In this way, these distinct analyses offer three new definitions of the perceived density expressing conception aspects particularly significant for understanding the architecture and urbanity of these dense multi-unit buildings. As a fundamental knowledge, it is shown that density, within the corpus, orientates the architects project's mode. The frequent reinterpretation of paradigmatic dense lodgings is one of the most striking proof of this conceptual change searching for innovations in the register of collective housing. So, in the density of depth, introversion and anonymity on the exterior seems to encourage distinct individualized space within the building as common domestic spheres only opened towards the inside of the apartment. In several cases, the usual urban and public spaces are integrated into the private interior of the apartments as if to domesticate a certain urbanity. In the density of the void, the proposed introversion of semi-public courtyards seems to help maintaining a larger sense of community in these multi-unit buildings. Altogether, it demonstrates a particular capacity to produce small cities within the city, at the same time independent and linked to the city. Finally, through the analysis of wall density, the exterior materiality and expression, dynamic or static, monumental at times, present a decidedly urban architecture enhancing a compact city in quest of new inhabitants.

EPFL2009

The research work of this PhD thesis was carried out in the context of an interdisciplinary project related to the study of urban morphogenesis. A team composed of architects and engineers specialized in GIS technologies have worked together in this project during three years, sharing their knowledge in order to understand and simulate the evolution of the urban environment of cities. The fundamental hypothesis that conducted this research is that the city can be seen as a self-organizing system governed by a set of morphogenesis rules, which can for example, determine the location of new architectural programs and induce the city's organization, from local to global scales. Architectural programs themselves are supposed to determine city's development. In this PhD thesis a simulation prototype of the urban growth based on the use of multi-agents systems was carried out. This prototype is a computer tool that allows the analysis and representation of the growth of the built environment. Nowadays, the ability to understand and simulate urban evolution proves to be essential in order to control the evolution of a city in a sustainable development view. Furthermore, this tool should facilitate the understanding and decision-making of those concerned with problems related to urban development. The urban system has been modeled as a set of space objects, such as buildings and networks, which interact between themselves. These interactions are carried out at different levels, from local to global scales, being controlled by behavioral rules or laws of growth. The result of their interaction can be figures or emergent phenomena represented at several scales. The approach using multi-agents vector systems was chosen in order to model a geographical complex system like a city, which integrates a vectorial modeling of space. Hence, each spatial agent does not possess a limit of form and size. The interest of using multi-agents vector systems also lies in their ability to manage various models of individuals, from simple entities to more complex ones. Thus, various levels of representation, such as individuals and groups of individuals, can be managed, which is not easily feasible, for example, with cellular agents. The development platform used is GeOxygene (Java computer programming language), which is an open-source platform developed at IGN (Institut Géographique National, France), by COGIT laboratory. This platform provides several GIS functions, allowing the development and implementation of the prototype here presented. An interaction model between agents was defined and the type of scenarios of each of these interactions was detailed. A set of methods and associated classes was developed. Agent's architecture was conceived in order to allow manipulation (sending, receiving and treatment) of exchanged messages. In order to show the relevance of the multi-agent multi-scale methodology, examples of buildings creation in a case study zone were carried out. Using the multi-scale vector simulation prototype here presented, the development of cities can be computed in a very innovative way. However, the developed prototype still lacks some accuracy, mostly due to the fact that the specified laws adopted for simulation do not reflect the whole reality, which is obviously much more complex to traduce. We have not yet validated the model for other cities – nevertheless, the model could already be used as a decision support tool, particularly as a planning support instrument for architects and urban planners. With regards to future work this prototype shall be integrated in a global approach of urban simulation, allowing the analysis of environmental risks, demographic and economic growth and transports simulation at different scales of analysis and 2D/3D visualization output, such as district and city.

EPFL2010

Entre ville et campagne

Sophie Lufkin

EPFL2010

Densité et logement collectif

Nicolas Bassand

EPFL2009