L.A.B.S - Landscape active binding stripes - Romainville / Grand Paris

The primary intention of the L.A.B.S. project is to re-establish the conditions for dialogue between neighborhoods that have been divided for too long and the inhabitants.
We are well aware that the "resources" of the site are above all the residents, those who live here, and that to promote the emergence of productive activities it is first a matter of establishing links.

Thus, the project proposes a work of remeshing of the districts starting from the street Louis Aubin towards the impasse des Oseraies. A network of “communicating landscape strips” is set up, modeled on old pre-existing agricultural strips, in order to recreate a low to medium density urban continuity and to interface “productive” programs yet to be invented with the inhabitants. .

This multiplicity of interfaces draws from the vocabulary of the garden, the stream, the alley and the path, the small square, etc. to create a dialogue in pairs of existing homes with artists' studios, with places of conviviality, with places of manufacture, etc. all contributing to the creation of a productive village in the design of which users will participate.

This project does not make a clean sweep of the past but on the contrary borrows from the history of the site and its topography to reveal its identity.
Thus, the old agricultural strips serve as a framework to connect fragmented urban fabrics. Likewise, the topography resulting from the dismantling of the A186 appears to be a landscape to be enhanced, offering the possibility of creating like a "landscape-district".

Inspired by the meanders and overlays of the existing site, the public spaces generated by the project are developed on several levels, an active and productive “above and below”.

The method that we have implemented for this project is a field method, based on surveys among residents, historical cartographic studies, and large-scale model work which has enabled us to better understand the problems generated by the site.

In order to take into account the question of the often long time of the urban project, L.A.B.S. is organized in four stages allowing a gradual reappropriation of the premises:

Step 1: renaturation and conservation of the topography, site memory.

Step 2: installation of a light soil grid that continues the existing mesh by revealing the old agricultural strips. Construction of a light and modular structure: the "Guinguette", place of public consultation.

Step 3: protection of the site from the nuisances of the A3 motorway while taking advantage of its flow thanks to a logistics building / silo parking and installation of sports equipment in connection with the park.

Step 4: construction of the first mixed buildings resulting from the consultation with the inhabitants.