Agricultural Urbanism

Team Point of View

We grew up in the country. It was easy to organize games and explorations around our homes, cycling races around hamlets, tadpole fishing in ditches or giant hide-and-seek in cornfields. These experiences were our first links with rural landscape. The goal of our work was not to recreate a nostalgic the country. But these memories did not leave us during the project’s development. For the competition, the theme chosen concerns the development of villages. We felt that it was important to question how the urbanization of the countryside was organized because the current planning does not make way for these areas of freedom. Thinking about the extension of a commune means, at first, thinking of what makes its limit or its boundary. The boundary is a common term used in country planning project. But how to define it? Does it exist?

Jury Point of View

The team proposes "constructible agricultural zones" on the edge of town centres combining small housing programmes with diversified agriculture (storage, production, breeding), thus attempting to go beyond urban zoning regulations for housing and agriculture. The project is divided into six test sites associated with a specific type of activity and dealt with architecturally.
The idea of "productive countryside" proposed by the team advocates a new type of controlled, sparse urbanization allowing housing and agricultural activity to coexist.