La butte des Carmes

In Marseille, the insalubrity of urban fabric is of topical concern. The intention of our project is to reshape the built and urban heritage of the 70's, which has too often been neglected. The introduction of an analysis and intervention method could help prevent insalubrity and decay and therefore preserve the Marseille heritage.

The functioning of this "urban island" deserves to be questioned. Our project seeks to requalify the structure of the neighbourhood through various operations such as the demolition and the rehabilitation of some buildings, as well as the construction of new schooling and housing facilities in place of those demolitions. The aim of these operations is to restructure the "urban island" through a coherent public space design. A system of small squares does exists today but is not exploited per se. We thus intend to structure and extend it to the scale of the whole neighbourhood. This morphology based on small squares determines the implantation of new buildings and helps creating a new urban path through the area. Parallel to this squares system, a recharacterisation of residential housings’ ground floors is conducted to open them up to public space. This will also answer the problem of "homogeneisation of temporality" which exist in all dormitory towns accross France. The two buildings we propose are enmeshed with the aforementioned system of squares. The housing units lean back on the church, creating a new urban entity, all on the same scale. This layout allows to define a new axis in the neighborhood where local shops as well as an educational and community center would establish themselves. The schooling unit would be placed at the south of the Butte. This program links up the bottom and the top of the Butte des Carmes. This building is a structuring one for the public space’s new path. In conclusion, our project seeks to revive a landlocked and neglected neighborhood by renewing it from within, clarifying its urban morphology through operations on the existing structure.\nIt allowed us to set up an analysis and intervention method on 70's architectural and urban heritage, too often left uncared. While the question of rehabilitation and requalification of heritage is of current concern, it has never been applied to the quarter of the Butte des Carmes. We decided to take an approach aimed at preventing insalubrity and decay of a recent heritage, through an urban and architectural requalification.