In response to economic situation Archikubik launched its gaze to the French territory, like so many other Spanish studies pressured by the crisis, looking for a career in the rest of Europe. The result was this contest won in the city of Montpelier, which transported good design and good Spanish technology, as has happened in many other cases.
Description of the project by Archikubik
The new parking is located in the heart of Montpellier, in the ZAC New Saint-Roch including the plans for the extension of the city center. The Parking is the structuring link in the extension of pedestrian areas between the Place de la Comédie and the train station. Saint Roch, in the heart of the railway landscape, completes "the intermodal transport unit" of the exchange of the train station.
The insertion of the "suspended-street", spine of the parking space, establishes an enlargement of the public space (ep) and re-activates the relationship between the users of the parking and the locals. It can be either a passage or a place, depending on the expansion of the "suspended-street", but on either case it is a place of social cohesion.
This space illustrates the concept of shared private spaces (epp) that invite to recreate the link between users by promoting meetings and joint ownership within private spaces, natural continuation of the dynamic public space.
This new parking has the ability to go beyond the original program and turns into a relationship building, acting on the bases of its environment. The beacon element of the parking is also an urban connecting element that creates a junction with the station area located to the east, and the railway tracks, now connected to the rest of the sector by the only bridge of Sète.
The building contains in its DNA code the potential mutability and evolutionally, to accommodate future uses like offices and homes, or other emerging uses in this new era of an information society. In short, it must integrate the time vector in architecture to be able to be projected into the future.
The use of a sustainable material like clay, combined with an innovative application: the ceramic fabric, allows us to incorporate an urban quality and brings the building to a kinder scale, making it turn into an organoleptic building that vibrates to the passing of trains and wind.
