Multipole of Décines, LOT AB

Décines, France

Construction of an offices building (4 floors) and commercial activities (ground floor)
Décines (France)
2019 – 2023
program: Construction of an offices building (4 floors) and commercial activities (ground floor)
> built surface: 4,800 sqm
HQE (French certification): breeam very good
contracting authority: EM2C
project: Alfonso Femia / Atelier(s) Alfonso Femia with
landscape: Barnabé Cozon_Hors Champs
structural – services engineering – cost control: Iliade ingénierie
environment: Tribu Energie
photos: ©Stefano Anzini
“The site must become a real place for life, on a neighbourhood and city scale, and a centrality, a symbol of the collective identity and heritage of Décines.” AF

The Multipole of Décines project develops itself in three main areas on 10 hectares of land: sanitary commercial activities, a mixed-use area and intergenerational housings. This mixed-use program ensures the project an attractiveness that exceeds the neighbourhood scale, involving it more on a territorial one.
The identity of the Multipole is based on a strong landscape project. It ensures continuity, through the green walks, with the Jonage Canal located a few hundred meters away.
This attention given to the network is the basis of an accommodation capacity within a context of heterogeneous urban sequences made of areas destined to activities and suburban fabrics.
The site must become a real place for life, on a neighbourhood and city scale, and a centrality, a symbol of the collective identity and heritage of Décines.
In the initial phase of the neighbourhood’s renovation, building A is the first visible façade in view of the subsequent construction of the main building on the corner of avenue Jean Jaurès and avenue Franklin Roosevelt.
Therefore, it must become a symbol, a strong element that sets the tone, that establishes a direction, a sense, a will.

The AB lot must focus on research aimed to restore the history of the site through a contemporary writing.
Like a palimpsest, it feeds on lines, existing traces and gives them a new meaning.

The area is thought of as a unitary landscaped park dedicated to relaxation and walks. The urban planning of the site provides for pedestrian circulation, within the site, from north to south and from east to west. The garden, placed in the heart of the plot, is a space for appropriation, for living together. It is a part of the plot architecture, of its identity and language.
Alfonso Femia