Boulevard de la Mer

Team Point of View

Saint-Brieuc gave its name to a broad bay, based on a lively ecosystem in which the tidal range always rules the settlement of men’s and town’s life. Forward of the bay, where deep sea is permanent, towns have naturally grown around the shores and beaches, whereas at the end of the bay towns has settled few kilometres from sea in the inner lands.
This situation is a key issue in the project. With the LGV extending (French high speed train) Saint-Brieuc is given the opportunity to become the only city of the bay directly accessible with high-speed trains and tightly linked to the sea. The old and still existing railway (for freight transport and tourism between Le Port du Légué and the train station) is reshaped as a seaside Boulevard. The latter is the matrix for urban interventions that fit the encountered landscapes, topographies, programs and to land owning opportunities. The project gathers multiple contextual issues and answers them using so-called “tools”. In order to better adapt to these characteristics, tools are combined and also act as the scope of interventions just as much as the guiding principle of the project. This course across the city is the area where experiments come up and provide an opportunity to offer promising prospects to the surrounding environment.

Jury Point of View

The quality of this project lies in its capacity to combine a territorial strategy with situated projects. The authors describe the Saint-Birieuc landscape as a “puzzle”. Their strategy is to draw on the existing infrastructure in order to introduce local interventions along a “trail of opportunities” and provide a “panoramic and continuous” interpretation of the landscape. They identify nine project themes (described as tools) that are combined and applied appropriately to the different sites.