In near future, Paris-Saclay will become a global innovation cluster that will be built on interactions between higher education, research and business. It will become a place where knowledge and money meets.
Vision 2050 – bird’s eye view
© Didzis Jaunzems . Published on April 12, 2014.
Paris-Sud university is one of several universities that are already located at Saclay. University campus has lost its identity and turned into place filled with mixture of fragmentation and isolation. Project vision is to consolidate these fragmentations into a unified plate to grow the city based on a solid foundation. A foundation that enables to construct a city, integrate greenery, generate culture and living harmony with diversities.
Vision 2050 - Model photo
© Didzis Jaunzems . Published on April 12, 2014.
To achieve this, the project is offering an “urban platform”– 400m wide and 2000m long that extends across the west entrance of the campus to the east axis of suburbia. The size of the platform help construct a critical mass to generate a city within walkable distances, help promote sustainable urbanism and yet limiting from further impact of urban sprawls.
Phasing
© Didzis Jaunzems . Published on April 12, 2014.
The plate thus offers a sense of identity to this formal university campus through its size and consolidations.
Vision 2018 – axonometric view
© Didzis Jaunzems . Published on April 12, 2014.
To further enhance this effect, project proposes a grid across the entire field of the platform as an operative tool that enable to organize the buildings in most rational and systematic way. The presence of the grid not only limited to its rationalization but rather it enables to generate a strategy to contain differences, allowing for variety in the architectural infill.
Vision 2018 – project site masterplan
© Didzis Jaunzems . Published on April 12, 2014.
If the strategy of the grid was infill to have differences, project also tries the opposite; it excavates the dense field of urbanism from which the existing natural resources (the waterways and greenery) are carved to generate voids.
The Grid – urban typologies
© Didzis Jaunzems . Published on April 12, 2014.
The strategy of the void allows the continuity of the ecological functioning of the site via waterways which it penetrates and connects with isolated greeneries to bigger natural resources.
Vision 2050 - Model photo
© Didzis Jaunzems . Published on April 12, 2014.
Furthermore, the voids are creating public spaces and generate emblematic streets that help define the sense of identity and focus from homogeneous field of the grid.
Vision 2050 - Model photo
© Didzis Jaunzems . Published on April 12, 2014.
The institutions on the outer parameter of the platform are conceived as “satellites” offering complementary conditions to the dense urbanized field by being in autonomous in the forest. As a result the institution will mark its own identity with surrounding nature and as a gateway to the city.
Vision 2050 - Model photo
© Didzis Jaunzems . Published on April 12, 2014.
Building 220 is one of satellites. Satellites enhance the identity of architecture and reuse of what already exists – the monumental expression of the 60’s with programmatic interventions. New public spaces are are carved out defined as absences of building.
Reconstruction - building 220
© Didzis Jaunzems . Published on April 12, 2014.
As a result, three different voids are created – ‘diagonal’, ‘horizontal’ and ‘vertical’ for three new programs university, common use spaces, and enterprises.
Reconstruction - building 220
© Didzis Jaunzems . Published on April 12, 2014.
The housing for student and teacher are situated within the grid block and is a perfect example of how grid can efficiently engage with such typologies. To support student socializing and interaction with the urban context public spaces are clustered of the building towards the street and it extends and into the building creating gradient of public – private. If the gradient of private-public for student housing is expressed in horizontal direction then for the teacher housing it happens vertically.
New architecture - student housing and teacher accommodation
© Didzis Jaunzems . Published on April 12, 2014.