Cardo

TEAM PORTRAIT

INTERVIEW
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VIDEO (by the team)

1. How did you form the team for the competition?
Clément, Martin et Sara met in Paris. Sara joined Caracalla, an architecture office founded by Clément and Martin in 2016, to participate in the Europan 15 competition and to collaborate in other shared projects. We all have different backgrounds and experience, from independent architectural practice to theoretical research and teaching, as well as various artistic collaborations between France and Italy; therefore, the team is characterized by a flexible and multidisciplinary approach to urban and architectural projects on a large span of scales.

2. How do you define the main issue of your project, and how did you answer on this session main topic, Living cities?
The main objective of the competition is the global redefinition of territorial and urban relationships throughout the agglomeration of Aulnat, in the perspective of a time-based transformation of the site. The central issue then becomes the search for a territorial reconciliation, airport-city-nature, through the revival of new forms of interactive attractiveness of the different environments, to give a high quality of life to the inhabitants, but also a form of alternative local economy that can retain an active and dynamic population in a stable manner.  In the perspective of a reconversion of the aeronautical industry towards low-carbon and silent «green aviation», a global rebalancing between the different forms of productivities of the territory is therefore at the basis of the process of revitalisation of Aulnat. In order to respond to this problem, the overall vision of the project is centred on the massive introduction of vegetation as an environmental and economic capital at different scales and in different ways. The vegetal material, beyond the cliché of sustainable green, is here employed for its productive capacity, and as an architectural matter used to define spaces. The project aims to intensify the airport-city-nature link and to recreate a linear fertile plain environment on a north-south axis, recreating a link between the airport site and Aulnat by recreating a living environment. By associating a productive meadow and allowing the reintegration of local biodiversity and multifunctional uses, the airport site will be able to become a place of life, open to the people of Aulnat, and Aulnat to travellers. The productive linear garden of Limagne is a landscape continuum towards 7 places, from the airport of Aulnat to the shared gardens of the chemin des Ronzières. It will take root on a new permeable and filtering soil, rediscovered after a fair resizing of the impermeable paths necessary for traffic and after the demolition of the superfluous asphalt surfaces (50/50).