BETWEEN MINERAL AND VEGETAL
This architecture faces firmly the challenge of programmatic and environmental integration. It is composed by different programs that constitute a coherent whole, able to structure a dialectic relation with nature. In order of importance we
find : offices IT, housings, shops and community facilities, the hotel.
The formal interaction is played on the dynamics between two architectural characters: The organic triangular complex, hosting hotel (100m tower) and housing (80m tower) and the horizontal Bloc system, hosting Elastic Offices (following the Cluster Concept).
The ground floor of each building is conceived as an infra-space that can host shops, restaurants and cafés, but might also be fluently empty, in order to facilitate sight orientation and visual continuity with the surrounding landscape.
The Offices System is located in a peripheral position, embracing the towers program and opening towards the natural “milieu”.
The vegetal and Humid “milieu” thus enters the urban dynamic articulating with the emerging organic volumetry.
Triangle Plans offer a wider sight on the territory, an east/west solar orientation, and allows an overwhelming sight of the nearby landscape from the offices.
But the environmental issue is more directly integrated in the architecture and the urban choices: For thermic reasons, all south oriented facades have a double skin system. The site will possess a great percentage of solar panels surfaces integrated to roofs and to a special south front façade system. The presence of wind turbines will help to produce energy. Recycled rain water will help to supply various treatment ponds in the site for the reuse of collected water. Vegetation will state a symbolic continuity with the local agricultural tradition.
