Geneva : Chatelaine
Development study
Urban ecology
Permeability
Urban renewal
Client :
République et Canton de Genève
BASE
+ LFU architectes urbanistes
+ Franck Boutté environement + EDMS BET + Transitec mobilité
Châtelaine / Genève / Vernier
Surface / 250 ha
Completed / 2015
‘Ville de foires’ in the Middle Ages, Protestant Rome during the Reformation, seat of the League of Nations and the UN in the 20th century; over the centuries Geneva inherited the profile of a “globalised” city-state before the term even existed.
The project offers an innovative reflection on the conditions for the integration of activities in the city, on the programmatic balance between Vernier and Geneva, on the articulation between business real estate, transport infrastructure and management of the individual mobility of employees and on the management of diversity. Our work also involves reinterpreting existing landscape logics in order to create an overall project ensuring an evolving transition between the current state, related projects and the neighborhood to come.
The landscape develops a support for thinking about urban development in a spontaneous way, because it provides both a precedent and a geographical context. The identity of the site consists of several landscape typologies which echo each other and which serve as the basis for all our urban development work. It is this very resonance that marks the special character of Geneva, remarkable for its diversity: marked at the same time by the presence of the river, the forest and the lake; both a hill town and a Rhone landscape. The Châtelaine site also has a double advantage: located between the city of Geneva and the development of the riparian forest, it benefits from a landscape with little human activity while still taking advantage of the centrality of the city.