The stamp of the Flon and the Louve in Lausanne

Lausanne: a hill surrounded by two rivers. The paradigm of the struggle between the original morphology of a city and the race towards a modern metropolis. The project analyses its evolution and the efforts to surpass its starting conditions. The city as a collection of layers. The current problems as a result of the historical divergence between them.

The town of Lausanne appears before us as a sediment of actions intended to overcome the orography containing the two rivers that founded it. A superposition of layers. Behind each layer, a different era, a different ideology, different technology.\nThe most urgent mission of the new Grand Lausanne will be to slow down the flow towards the future in order to look back. The new urban policies will have to be based on a holistic and retrospective vision of the town. For the future town to work, it is essential that all parts of it do so.\nFor this reason, the project emphasizes on the northern part of the city centre. The most complicated area, topographically speaking. Two small valleys historically reduced to being a sort of service area for other kinder parts of the same town. To achieve this, three main lines of action are proposed.\nInfrastructure. Articulating, from a pedestrian point of view, the Flon and the Louve valleys with their immediate surrounding area. Turning technology into a useful tool for sewing the city vertically. Accessibility and connectivity become crucial requirements for the reactivation of a specific site.\nStructure. Insertion of public planning and housing. Housing has a direct social effect on the area where it is implemented. Without dwellings there will be no inhabitants. Social housing in different timeframes is proposed as an agent for regeneration, in order to face the growing shortage of affordable housing in the town.\nComfort. The quality of public space is a key point for the city to succeed. Removing on-street car parks. Installing urban facilities. Incorporating porous pavements. Planting trees.\nAll this, just to democratize the town, avoiding segregation and sharing out equal opportunities, claiming the identity of Lausanne and, perhaps, being able to tell our grandchildren that a river used to pass under their feet.