Common Root

Common Roots project refers to the virtues of the Chartreuse mountain range and Saint-Pierre village. Landscape, wood resources, tradition, local know-how and intergenerational transmission are all terms that are dear to the inhabitants and that it will be important to preserve and enhance.

To the list of vacant spaces will soon be added the former town hall, an iconic building erected in the town centre in 1927. Nearly 1600m² will be available by 2022, once the Regional Natural Park has been moved to the new “Maison du Parc”. This building’s ideal location and importance in terms of heritage mean that it has become the cornerstone of the design. It will allow the inhabitants, associations and the «curious» (people outside the massif who wish to know more about it) to be brought together around a multifunctional centre that promotes the area’s assets.\nThis programme consists of a wood workshop, a manufacturing site and exhibition areas promoting the local wood sector (certified P.D.O. in 2018). It also includes a centre dedicated to associations that play a decisive role in the life of the village.\nThe public space provided in the design welcomes visitors and reveals access to the marked hiking trails and the community garden. Its regeneration will pay tribute to the old qualities of the historic square in the centre of the city. Two luminous faults, one located in the wooden workshop and the other giving access to the garden, reveal the landscape from the city map. The panorama over the Chartousin mountain range is revealed by a belvedere that extends the public space to the outside.\nFinally, various housing units are built around this new centre and set a limit to it. The wood workshop will be projected as a tool that allows the inhabitants to be active in their village by rehabilitating their own housing through the local wood resource. Finally, this project aims to unite the inhabitants in order to create a local activity around wood that will make it possible in ten years, twenty years or more to build the future projects of Saint-Pierre de Chartreuse. In this way, the inhabitants become interpreters of the territory and take part in its development while respecting local know-how.