Students design a car-free Lausanne
The project shows how the Saint-François parking lot could be transformed. © Davin/Valette
A master's project in architecture redesigns downtown Lausanne, setting out the key steps that could enable the city to free itself of cars by 2035. Similar initiatives are underway in other European cities.
The idea to rid central Lausanne of cars came to two architecture students while they were deciding on their master’s project.
They realized that one building in particular – the Saint-François parking lot – was at the core of the problem. This building links the city center with the Flon neighborhood, meaning that it could play a strategic role in turning downtown Lausanne car-free. So they decided to expand and completely transform it. “Our building holds a restaurant, a co-op market with local products, and a hotel that offers medium-term accommodations such as for artists, conference-goers and businesspeople,” says Flavien Davin. “There would also be common spaces and a co-working area to promote interaction between these groups.”
The students also added a public staircase along the side of the building. “We felt that this ‘patchwork building’ deserved an important role, as it sits above one of Lausanne’s public transport hubs,” says Bernard Valette, co-author of the study. “Currently, people who use the parking lot do not have direct access to the various means of public transport beneath the building. Our aim was to better coordinate the building’s different purposes.”
Pedestrian zone and distribution depots
Their project also encompasses the Flon train station, which is the third largest in French-speaking Switzerland in terms of passenger numbers. “Our vision was to transform the downtown area, between the Flon neighborhood and Saint-François, into a huge pedestrian zone. That would require expanding the public transport system and totally redesigning the city’s logistics,” says Valette. The students’ project takes into account the future M3 metro line, which will strengthen the link between the north and south of the city, as well as the future tram line that will connect the western side of the city to its center. They would add yet another tramline, between Morges and Lutry, in order to relieve throughtraffic south of the city.
Maintaining the flow of goods to stores and residents in a car-free city center would require some radical thinking. For this, the students designed three major ‘automated distribution depots’ in the city through which all goods headed for downtown stores and residents would pass. These strategic nodes would deliver the packages to automated distribution depots or directly to the intended recipients using electric shuttles. This approach will keep residents from having to travel outside the city to buy things that require a vehicle, e.g. furniture.
According to the students, once the public transport system has been beefed up and distribution depots created, the downtown area could be rid of cars. “Eliminating cars would free up a surface area equal to eight times the size of the Flon neighborhood,” says Valette. “The former streets could be covered in trees, defying the idea that you need a car to get outdoors and enjoy nature.” Underscoring this notion, the students would remove the sidewalks running along the streets. In Saint-François, for example, public transport would run down the center of the wide avenue. The remaining space would be used for outside seating and greenery. Further down, some streets in Flon would become wooded. And according to the students’ timeline, downtown Lausanne could become fully pedestrian by 2035.
Changes ahead
Is all this realistic? It certainly seems to be, because a similar project is already in the works in Oslo for 2019. The city of Brussels is considering it too. Paris even closed the right bank of the Seine to cars this year, after closing the left bank in 2013. For Emmanuel Rey, the director of EPFL’s Laboratory of Architecture and Sustainable Technologies (LAST) and the academic director of the Master’s project, the students’ work is highly relevant: “You have to remember that cities were completely transformed by the rise of the automobile – symbolizing the triumph of modernity – in the second half of the 20th century. In Lausanne, for example, there were 66 km of tramlines in 1930. The city gave up on them completely in 1964, but they’re now making a comeback as one of the key links in the Lausanne-Morges conurbation project. As the built environment expands and the energy transition forges ahead, we have to expect important functional changes in all urban territories.”
Solving two problems at once
The students note that the generational factor also comes into play. “For the under-30s, cars may no longer be a symbol of freedom,” says Davin. “Many of these people don’t have a license and just don’t see the need for one. In fact, the number of cars in the canton of Vaud has been stagnating for the past five years. Throughout this project, we realized how cars have created multiple problems in cities. By moving them away from the center, we can immediately solve two of those problems: we can improve both the quality of life for city dwellers as well as the prospects for urban densification. We wanted our project to be visionary, yet realistic. Even if the idea of a car-free city center still scares some people.”
