Landscape Focus EUROPAN 13 Winner
The issue put by the city of Saint-Brieuc was about land-sea relation. The project makes the question relevant about the proximity of the sea to open the territory to the multiplicity of landscapes that compose it: urbanized or bocage plateau, wooden valleys, rocky coastline and port areas. The strategy purpose to balance the infrastructural landscape by revealing the sweep of the natural geography of the site and creating the opening of micro situations giving back a meaning on a small-scale. The question was about exploring the landscape project capacity to transcend the territory scales and to work with a fundamentally adaptable material: the living.
Land-sea connections
The land-sea connection can be expressed:
- regarding the views: a direct connection with a look which allows to structure the beach, the valleys and the plateau;
- regarding the environment: a symbolic connection relying on the specific landscape vocabulary of the land and sea;
- regarding customs: a daily connection experienced between the land and sea, to live, work, produce;
- regarding the route: a connection through movement to move from the train station to the port, from the plateau to the seaboard;
- regarding activities: a connection between the participants linked to the exploitation of the land and sea.
Spaces and project matters
Some changeable spaces which had an interface potential between at least two landscapes (land and sea, plateau and valleys, city and port) are spotted. The balcony “belvedere” sites on the valleys can be strong links between the plateau and the hills and they are a part of the morphology of the valleys within their urban cover. The “cork” sites on the estuaries are impenetrable places which obstruct the transition between the valley and the seaboard. Regarding important surface areas, they can really reveal the system of valleys which converge towards the port and open onto the sea. The reticular site of the city centre public spaces enjoys a certain porosity but has to take up the topographical challenge of a soft connexion between the port and the inhabited plateau. The trivialization of public spaces is a risk to avoid by finding original and evocative renaming tools.
Visual field, a land-sea connection through some views
The approach relies on a horizontal vision based on a fundamental perceptive principle of sight: the look sweeps and embraces the landscape, looking for the horizon, evaluating a gradient of proximity with the sea and the hinterland.
The map below shows the current state of the visible space since nine months: the perception of the landscape is divided up and the visual field is often narrow. The map of the projected state shows the desire to highlight the size of the valleys and to inform of their spatial and hydraulic role from the hinterland to the seaboard. For each point of view, two maps show the current state and the projected state of the visible space. We can see with the dotted lines the limit of the view at the beginning of the twentieth century, recreated from some postcards of the period: the visual field is often more extensive than today.
These maps involve some projects: the opening of some areas, the cleaning, the management of some spaces and the promotion of some panoramic viewpoints.
The city centre framework
The analysis of the city centre public spaces shows very different stories and customs depending on the square, this can be explained by the variability of their status: some spaces have been successively built then demolished. The parking lot Poulain-Corbion for example, by its lack of toponymy related to the use of a public square, rather looks like a hollow tooth; whereas the square of the Préfecture and the Martray carry on in the story of the city. Before considering a layout, we have to question the status of these spaces “the fact that a site isn’t developed isn’t a reason to turn it into a square”2. From this study, our choice is to recreate a dense block on the current parking lot Poulain-Corbion and to open the block which receives the covered market.
Three symbolic sites
Three clogged sites were located in estuaries in three valleys. Each one of these raises large issues involving pollution : the EDF-GDF du Légué wasteland involves 6 hectares of deteriorated ground soil in direct contact with the Gouët, the sewage treatment plant is an industrial and environmental facility landlocked in the Gouédic valley, the Grève des Courses wasteland is a 28 hectare garbage dump on the foreshore since 1960. Breaking up the clogs on sites would address several issues at stake : recovering the flow in the watercourse upstream and downstream until the seashore, advancing towards the ocean bypassing exceptional sites, mobilizing stakeholders in agricultural and shipping networks around environmental programs. Development of these sites simultaneously includes the constraints associated with industrial urban facilities and public facilities with vocational and cultural underpinnings, situated in a magnified landscape context.
The EDF wasteland site, after its public opening and cleanup, will host a methanization plant covering the traces of the former building, along the Légué street, guaranteeing the visual continuity between the harbor entrance and the beginning of the valley. This urban factory enhances the industrial identity of the site, will be open on the site to the public as an educational tool around energy generated from refuse. Methanization can be carried out from different substrates : green algae, household rubbish, green waste, manure, refinement sludge. The precise role of this developmental plant will be established through dialog with involved stakeholders.
The sewage treatment plant landlocked within the Gouédic valley will evolve into a purification plant. The existing development will become the subject of change to receive the public and will be reinforced to reduce olfactory pollution. The landscape project will stage these new installations and their proximity with the Gouédic and the harbor. On the dumping site Grève des Courses, will be restored by an intermediary habitat filtering the waterway between the Douvenant and the bay. The byway of this wasteland will allow experimentation through a lagoon.
Guide the living, a material production-recovery cycle
The strategy relies on the census of a collection of possible projects in the long term run prospective vision, then on their chronological hierarchization. The territorial project program is set from a landscape management which starts a virtuous circle with a reemployment of substance. Thus, the project starts with a management of open spaces aimed at leading living things rather than controlling them. This kind of project enables the meeting of local partners and the use of former resources.
A dainty work on the visual connexion with the landscape is necessary for any projects to show the possible transformations and get the stakeholders together. The clearing and the opening of some areas provoke a production of green “waste”: wood, mulching, shavings, etc. a precious material to organize public space BY using these materials for less. The landscape project involves a progressive transformation process and creates material exchanges on a local scale which echoes other sites and becomes a part of the social and cultural integration of some places on their geographical territory. To adapt these public spaces to multiple and unexpected functions, these layouts will become an opportunity to collectively invest the place and will be a starting point to take over the area.
