Starting of the design studio entitled LIVING LANDSCAPE
Bercher (www.leuropevueduciel.com)
By an approach at different levels of intervention - from urban design to constructive detail - Prof. Emmanuel Rey's studio aims at analyzing, exploring and experimenting the specific issues related to the contribution of the architectural project to the evolution of built environment towards sustainability, in particular in the perspective of an urban densification near public transport and an experimentation of new constructive approaches. Entitled LIVING LANDSCAPE, the studio will explore during this academic year 2016-2017 the development of a dense peri-burban neighborhood located next to the railway station of Bercher.
Faced with the many consequences caused by urban sprawl, a consensus gradually reorients the development of built areas inwards and promotes the processes of urban densification. In that context, the approach is not limited to the city centers and also concerns territories now forming large urban areas. Certain sectors, in particular the ones located next to the public transportation and presenting a potential of densification, constitute strategic opportunities to metamorphose the urban regions. In a perspective of sustainability, the issue is not and by far limited to the sole issue of the localization and the densification of built areas. If density is an important quantitative issue, it is also to be considered as a necessary condition but not sufficient. From a perspective taking into consideration optimized environmental, socio-cultural and economical aspects, this evolution actually also raises numerous qualitative questions for architectural design.
For this 2016-2017 edition, the project exercises will more particularly focus on the research for creative solutions, adapted to a densification of peri-urban character sectors, located at the end of the green line Lausanne-Echallens-Bercher (LEB), close to Bercher station. Bounded by a railway track, a craft area, a village street and a residential area, the site is a space vocation landscape articulation. Its close proximity to a public transport stop gives it a potential for densification, which has to be revealed and defined in a peri-urban context.
From this perspective, the LIVING LANDSCAPE workshop will aim at exploring, by the architectural project, the multiple stakes potentialities of such an evolution in the borders of the Lausanne urban area. At a programmatic level, the workshop will mainly approach the intermediate housing concept, a kind of housing whose characteristics stand between those of the house and those of the apartment building. Reflections on activity spaces and public areas adapted to a suburban situation will also be part of the approach expected from the students.
