Project published in a+t 33-34. HYBRIDS III. Residential Mixed-Use Buildings.
Courtillières is an example of a failure in modern urban planning. The neighbourhood, designed by Émile Aillaud towards the end of the 1950s, is currently undergoing different urban regeneration plans in order to slow down building deterioration and even more so, to improve the profound social unrest of the area.
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The de Young Museum was founded in 1895 and its headquarters in Central Park, San Francisco was kept open until 1989 when it was severely damaged by an earthquake. The new headquarters is a far more compact building than its predecessor: its footprint is 37% smaller, which has allowed part of the space occupied by the former building to be returned to the park.
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The main pedestrianised street in Miami Beach awaits the arrival of this multi-purpose complex. Surrounded by the largest collection of Art Deco buildings in the world, a series of overlapping trays are connected by a circuit of ramps for cars. This car access will allow the building to be toured and to access homes and businesses that are in its path.
Photos taken by Javier Arpa, available under request.
The programme of 100 social dwellings is housed in 3 separate buildings which are adapted to the difficulties of the site: views, planning restrictions, preservation of existing trees, etc. The dwellings are of different sizes and they each have a balcony protected with plastic curtains which allow them to be used as rooms in winter.
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This new 42,000 m2 park in one of the most underprivileged areas of Paris is a result of grassroots campaigning to provide the area with a quality public space. The presence of a sociologist in the design team, as well as the inclusion in the working team of the future supervisors of the area, has allowed the project to meet the residents' expectations.
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The new pedestrian footbridge links the Bercy Park with the riverside and the French National Library. One single gesture serves to bring together the Library access plaza, the riverside walks and the park on the other side of the Georges Pompidou expressway.
The 304m long structure crosses the river with a span of 190m without intermediate supports and is made up of two elements which work closely together: a concave arch and a convex catenary. Both curves support pedestrian routes which cross over at the centre of the footbridge. Photos taken by Javier Arpa, available under request.
Map of the average house prices of Paris and its metropolitan crown (meilleursagents.com, 2009)
Paris, the most densely-populated capital in Europe (20,164 inhab/km2)*, occupies land which has been filled up long since and walled off by its Boulevard Périphérique. The densities differ greatly between arrondissements, going from the 10,000 inhab/km2 of the 4th arrondissement to the 40,000 inhab/km2 of the 11th**.
To this can be added the inertia of its enormous historical patrimony, which could end up paralyzing it, and the sky high house prices, which have gone up by 40% on av.
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Combarel and Marrec’s infill contains 17 apartments subsidized by the municipality. The building stands on columns above the parking lot on the street level (a rare typological innovation in the city) and its neutral glass façade in the midst of the stone and renderings of the traditional Parisian architecture.
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