Regenerating Carouge grounds
Competition team
Philipp R.W. Urech (CH) Architect, landscaper
Antoine Vialle (FR) Architect, urbanist
Yannick Poyat (FR) agronomy-landscape engineer
Europan 16 Carouge (CH)
runner-up
2021
Team point of view
The open spaces in la Fontenette offers a unique opportunity to regenerate an area of river divagation, cool atmosphere and leisure, essential to the Greater Geneva. The Fontenette neighbourhood is destined to become an inhabited landscape and ecological infrastructure. According to the potentialities of the site, 3 objectives are targeted for regenerating the Carouge Fontenette grounds: (In)filtering waters; Cooling the urban atmosphere; Towards carbon neutrality. The project aims at establishing a connecting ecological infrastructure according to three strategies generating the morphologies of the project :
1. ECOLOGICAL CORRIDORS, Demineralization, Soft Mobility and Metabolic Exchanges;
2. THREE SOILS, Circular Economy of Materials;
3. CONNECTING PUBLIC SPACES, the ‘Re-Invention’ of Carouge.
Jury Point of View
The project deliberately focuses on the issues of climate, water and soil, the latter being presented as a prime protagonist of local metabolic dynamism. One of the strengths of this project is its close analysis of the components that constitute the climatic aspects of the local milieu. Starting with the soil, the role of water is tackled from several perspectives (infiltration, contribution to the microclimate), but also from a more social angle (access to water). The project spotlights invisible and nevertheless essential elements such as air flows, water and heat balances, the nature of the ground surface.
