Tours / Saint-Pierre-des-Corps: What if the A10 motorway opened up urban passages?

Tours, France 2015 (Competition - 2nd Phase)

This competition aimed to obtain innovative scenarios that would create new dynamism to links throughout the city and between Tours and St-Pierre-des-Corps, without impacting negatively on the functionality of the A10 motorway, on a point where this overpasses the railway. The approach comes from the team’s theme “Turn cuts into cores”, where the Passages are taken as ground for flowing and living, in such a way that the obstacle is turned into a centre, conceptually and spatially speaking.
The objective of this proposal is to give a new vitality to the peripheral areas of Tours and Saint-Pierre-des-Corps, using the presence of the two big infrastructures, and to enhance the railway heritage as an identity creator, connecting it with a strong natural value: the Movement Park, drawn over the deactivated railway lines. This Park is also a support for the change of paradigm about mobility and contributes to a continuous green structure, aiming to promote infiltration and reduce the floods impact.
The core of the Park are the areas below the crossing motorway x railway – called the Cathedrals. These are torn so that they become sunnier and permeable, allowing a green invasion of the concrete areas, ensuring, at the same time, the conservation of their character of exterior public rooms.
From this core, a network of pedestrian and bicycle pathways spreads over the Park and both cities, connecting them, while the traffic reorganization that they allow opens the possibility of new means and routes of public transport.