43°20’3’’N 5°21’39”E : Manifeste Clinique

TEAM DATA

Team Representative: Florian Carrot (FR) – architect urbanist; Associates: Céline Montaru (FR), Alice Mathais (FR) – architects urbanists; Grégoire Billard (FR) – jurist, urbanist

69 rue des Rigoles, 75020 Paris (FR)
+33 777729647 – contact@lup-urbanisme.fr / alice.mathais@gmail.com

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^{A. Mathais, G. Billard, F. Carrot, C. Montaru}

VIDEO (by the team)

INTERVIEW

1. How did you form the team for the competition?

The team was made through the association of the LUP agency (Florian Carrot, architect - urban planner, Grégoire Billard, lawyer - urban planner, both LUP’s partners and Céline Montaru, project manager) and Alice Mathais, urban planner, with the wish to confront our different visions and experiences of the urban project, in terms of planning, uses, architectural identities, landscapes and operational challenges.
 

2. How do you define the main issue of your project, and how did you answer on this session main topic: the place of productive activities within the city?

Actually, the neighbourhood was already answering to the productive city issues: combining old industrial sites and faubourg, the Cabucelle had changed, over time, integrating workshops on the ground floor and automotive businesses on brownfields. For us, the question was to develop a project on the basis of this active city, in order to support and enhance the existing economic fabric and to prevent uncontrolled urban dynamics from which could emerge a homogenous urban fabric.
 

3. How did this issue and the questions raised by the site mutation meet?

From our point of view, the transformation of La Cabucelle required a transversal response, crossing three scales: the integration of the district with the great dynamics of Marseille; the district and its renewal; the Europan project perimeters (old and abandoned industrial sites).
This led us to define the role of Europan project sites as levers of action in the service of the transformation of the whole neighbourhood. Finally, the renewal of the sites selected by Europan was “just” a way of changing the heart of the Cabucelle.
 

4. Have you treated this issue previously? What were the reference projects that inspired yours?

Several issues that we regularly have to think about are significant over La Cabucelle: how to maintain productive activity in the heart of a lively and inhabited district? How to impulse urban transformation without switching to standardization or gentrification? How to integrate the inhabitants in the project, alongside private and public actors? How to improve diversity of activities and urban habits while limiting conflicts of use? The interest for us was to cross these issues and put our experiences and personal references in perspective.
Alice, through her professional experience, worked on projects related to the challenges of deindustrialization and citizen participation approaches. LUP worked, for example, on land or operational strategies linked to the urban project.
It is rather a multitude of small reference projects (or counter-examples), often relating to a particular point (a place, an urban process), which allowed us to move forward in our project proposal to renew the Cabucelle district.
 

5. Urban-architectural projects like the ones in Europan can only be implemented together with the actors through a negotiated process and in time. How did you consider this issue in your project?

The integration of the "urban players" processes is the key point for our "manifesto" project. One of the proposed principles was to set up a federative structure, called "the Clinic" allowing to bring together all the people concerned by the future of the district: inhabitants, but also economic actors and public authorities so that a shared project emerges, led by all.
 

6. Is it the first time you have been awarded a prize at Europan? How could this help you in your professional career?

First time awarded! Our participation in the reflections about the future of La Cabucelle was an opportunity for us to question the implementation of an "inclusive" project process, in order to think about urban renewal for and with the inhabitants and actors of a district. An approach that we hope to apply throughout our respective professional careers.

TEAM IDENTITY

Office: /
Functions: Architecture, urbanism, law
Average age of the associates: 28 years old

Has your team, together or separately, already conceived or implemented some projects and/or won any competition? If yes, which ones?

This is our first collaboration of all the members. Florian and Grégoire were able to carry out common projects within the LUP office, with town centre revitalization studies, support for private operators in setting up their operations or even through analysis and the implementation of land strategies.