Fleurance (FR)

Inhabited milieu's challenges

«Florencia floruit, floret semperque florebit».
In the heart of the Lomagne region of Gers, regularly named the «French Tuscany», and in honor of the prestigious city of Florence, Eustache de Beaumarchais, who built bastides for the King of France, founded Fleurance in the 13th century.
Built on an orthogonal plan centered on a market hall, the town has expanded over the decades along the main roads that structure the territory from north to south.
Today, Fleurance participates in the governmental program «Patites Villes de Demain», which aims to «improve the quality of life in small centralities and surrounding rural areas, through dynamic trajectories committed to the ecological transition».
The site proposed by the City of Fleurance is an industrial and commercial wasteland, on the edge of the former southern rampart of the Bastide, now occupied by the Aristide Briand paths that flank the RN 21, the main road that links Auch and Agen.
One of the major challenges for the City, in the rehabilitation, transformation and reuse of this wasteland, is to reinforce the attractiveness of the town center by offering the inhabitants (and with the aim of welcoming new ones) the creation of a new common narrative, in connection with the history of the place and that of the territory. In a context of climatic emergency, it will be a question of experimenting and imagining new architectural dynamics, respectful of the environment and regenerative for the territory. It will also be a question of inventing, in the heart of the Bastide and in the immediate proximity of preserved natural elements, new uses which will participate, from an ecological, social and cultural point of view, in the creation of new urban synergies.

Questions to competitors

In the heart of the Bastide of Fleurance, in a territory irrigated by the Gers and its tributaries, how can an industrial and commercial wasteland, historically and architecturally linked to the strong agricultural activity that has shaped the landscape, be reactivated and reused in order to create new urban synergies?
What uses should be imagined to allow, in an inclusive way and with a concern for territorial balance, the creation of new spatial interactions on the project site, then on the scale of the city?
What architectural, urban and landscape processes should be developed to initiate, from the project site, the revitalization of the historic center and create at the same time new links between the different parts of the territory?
Still based on the project site, what new mobility systems should be included in a project to redefine and enhance public space at the city level?
More generally, how can the different components of an urban metabolism under construction be enriched and linked between culture, nature, habitat, associative and intergenerational life, thanks to an inclusive redefinition of public space on a city scale, initiated by the transformation and reappropriation of an indus- trial, agricultural and commercial wasteland in the historic heart of Fleurance?
The aim is to create a new narrative between the historic city, agricultural land and nearby natural spaces, through a reflection on our ways of living and using the resources at our disposal. The projects developed on the site of the wasteland will have to question and put forward new possibilities to meet, to consult, to explore and to emancipate, while taking care of the inhabited milieus, whether they are human or non-hu- man.