TOTEMs

The site of this project is in an area surrounded by very different elements: a railway with a train station, a two-floor house, a 10-floor apartment block and an important road. So the difficulty is to define this area (as shown in the sketch) and design something that may complement the different elements. The initial intention was to create a “TOTEM”, a reference point for the district, with a 40-meter-high monolith. Due to the complexity of organizing the interiors of such a building, we designed a second project in which we divided a big block into four buildings and then cut across it with a horizontal plane. Thus 4 buildings enclose an elevated square, placed at mid height between street level and the train station access, and which represents the core of the project and the district. The shops and services look onto the street and the square. The smaller building is only for offices, whereas the other buildings house apartments from 1st to last floor. Under the square there is an 80-seat auditorium for every kind of event.