In some ways Sandra Planchez’s project in Nantes is unspectacular, reports Edwin Heathcote in the FT. It takes on board the slightly Flemish aesthetic currently fashionable in architecture, the dark grey brick punched through with metal-encased openings and the irregular façades and composition familiar from the pages of international design journals. And in some ways I could have picked almost any of the designs for new housing on the huge former Alstom site on Nantes’ Ile de Nantes. But the more you look around what has been a remarkable regeneration, the better this unassuming project looks.
This was the city’s heavy-engineering quarter, full of shipyards, engineering workshops, warehouses and huge industrial sheds. Some of these have survived — like the one about to reopen as the Ecole des Beaux Arts next door; others have left only traces. The problem here has been the weaving of new connective tissue around the island, the material to make a city. Despite the presence of a thriving (and architecturally brilliant) architecture school by Lacaton & Vassal and some quirky office buildings (including an emerging legal quarter), this new neighbourhood doesn’t feel at all like a neighbourhood. What the architects of Unik have done is to create a series of buildings that successfully mix uses to seed a space where it can begin to behave like a real city.
As a result, there are spaces for new shops on the ground floor (there is, oddly, hardly any retail accommodation around here), commercial space on the lower floors and a mix of for-sale and socially rented accommodation above. The whole thing is crowned by a roof garden that is shared between all the inhabitants of the building, without differentiating or limiting access, so that it functions as a real communal space.
The buildings are flat fronted but there are balconies and bridges, and the rooftops are differentiated through a more domestic articulation. Metal-clad, house-like structures are recessed behind the street façades, reducing the buildings’ mass and creating a new rooftop realm. The architects have managed to negotiate the difficult switch of scales between the industrial and the domestic, the institutional and the public.
To see how difficult this can be, it is only necessary to look at London’s Docklands or Hamburg’s HafenCity, where a desire to create urban density has often led to an overwhelming yet still somehow bland architecture, which strangles the streetscape rather than animating it.
This is unassuming, unspectacular and workmanlike, but in creating that framework, it is also modest and intelligent enough to allow the city to grow and adapt around and through it. Like the best buildings, it embodies a microcosmic urbanity. Sometimes architecture just needs to become background.
FT - Unspectacular but remarkable regeneration in NantesNantes ([n??t] ( listen)) (Gallo: Naunnt or Nantt (pronounced [n??t] or [n???t]); Breton: Naoned (pronounced [?n??wn?t])) is a city in western France on the Loire River, 50 km (31 mi) from the Atlantic coast. The city is the sixth-largest in France, with a population of nearly 300,000 in Nantes and an urban area of 600,000 inhabitants. With Saint-Nazaire, a seaport on the Loire estuary, Nantes forms the main north-western French metropolis. It is the administrative seat of the Loire-Atlantique département and the Pays de la Loire région, one of 18 regions of France. Nantes belongs historically and culturally to Brittany, a former duchy and province, and its omission from the modern Brittany région is controversial.
Nantes was identified during classical antiquity as a port on the Loire. It was the seat of a bishopric at the end of the Roman era before it was conquered by the Bretons in 851. Although Nantes was the primary residence of the 15th-century dukes of Brittany, Rennes became the provincial capital after the 1532 union of Brittany and France. During the 17th century, after the establishment of the French colonial empire, Nantes gradually became the largest port in France and was responsible for nearly half of the 18th-century French Atlantic slave trade. The French Revolution resulted in an economic decline, but Nantes developed robust industries after 1850 (chiefly in shipbuilding and food processing). Deindustrialisation in the second half of the 20th century spurred the city to adopt a service economy.
In 2012, the Globalization and World Cities Research Network ranked Nantes as a Gamma world city. It is the fourth-highest-ranking city in France, after Paris, Lyon and Marseilles. The Gamma category includes cities such as Algiers, Orlando, Porto, Turin and Leipzig. Nantes has been praised for its quality of life, and it received the European Green Capital Award in 2013. The European Commission noted the city's efforts to reduce air pollution and CO2 emissions, its high-quality and well-managed public transport system and its biodiversity, with 3,366 hectares (8,320 acres) of green space and several protected Natura 2000 areas.
Wikipedia - NantesNantes' cityscape is primarily recent, with more buildings built during the 20th century than in any other era. The city has 122 buildings listed as monuments historiques, the 19th-ranked French city. Most of the old buildings were made of tuffeau stone (a light, easily-sculpted sandstone typical of the Loire Valley) and cheaper schist. Because of its sturdiness, granite was often used for foundations. Old buildings on the former Feydeau Island and the neighbouring embankments often lean because they were built on damp soil.
Nantes has a few structures dating to antiquity and the early Middle Ages. Remnants of the third-century Roman city wall exist in the old town. The Saint-Étienne chapel, in the Saint-Donatien cemetery outside the city centre, dates to 510 and was originally part of a Roman necropolis. The Roman city walls were largely replaced during the 13th and 15th centuries. Although many of the walls were destroyed in the 18th century, some segments (such as Porte Saint-Pierre, built in 1478) survived.
Several 15th- and 16th-century half-timbered houses still stand in Le Bouffay, an ancient area corresponding to Nantes' medieval core which is bordered by Nantes Cathedral and the Castle of the Dukes of Brittany. The large, Gothic cathedral replaced an earlier Romanesque church. Its construction took 457 years, from 1434 to 1891. The cathedral's tomb of Francis II, Duke of Brittany and his wife is an example of French Renaissance sculpture. The Psallette, built next to the cathedral about 1500, is a late-Gothic mansion. The Gothic castle is one of Nantes' chief landmarks. Begun in 1207, many of its current buildings date to the 15th century. Although the castle had a military role, it was also a residence for the ducal court. Granite towers on the outside hide delicate tuffeau-stone ornaments on its inner facades, designed in Flamboyant style with Italianate influence. The Counter-Reformation inspired two baroque churches: the 1655 Oratory Chapel and Sainte-Croix Church, rebuilt in 1670. A municipal belfry clock (originally on a tower of Bouffay Castle, a prison demolished after the French Revolution) was added to the church in 1860.
After the Renaissance, Nantes developed west of its medieval core along new embankments. Trade-derived wealth permitted the construction of many public monuments during the 18th century, most designed by the neoclassical architects Jean-Baptiste Ceineray and Mathurin Crucy. They include the Chamber of Accounts of Brittany (now the préfecture, 1763–1783); the Graslin Theatre (1788); Place Foch, with its column and statue of Louis XVI (1790), and the stock exchange (1790–1815). Place Royale was completed in 1790, and the large fountain added in 1865. Its statues represent the city of Nantes, the Loire and its main tributaries. The city's 18th-century heritage is also reflected in the hôtels particuliers and other private buildings for the wealthy, such as the Cours Cambronne (inspired by Georgian terraces). Although many of the 18th-century buildings have a neoclassical design, they are adorned with sculpted rococo faces and balconies. This architecture has been called "Nantais baroque".
Most of Nantes' churches were rebuilt during the 19th century, a period of population growth and religious revival after the French Revolution. Most were rebuilt in Gothic Revival style, including the city's two basilicas: Saint-Nicolas and Saint-Donatien. The first, built between 1844 and 1869, was one of France's first Gothic Revival projects. The latter was built between 1881 and 1901, after the Franco-Prussian War (which triggered another Catholic revival in France). Notre-Dame-de-Bon-Port, near the Loire, is an example of 19th-century neoclassicism. Built in 1852, its iconic dome was inspired by that of Les Invalides in Paris. The Passage Pommeraye, built in 1840–1843, is a multi-storey shopping arcade typical of the mid-19th century.
Industrial architecture includes several factories converted into leisure and business space, primarily on the Isle of Nantes. The former Lefèvre-Utile factory is known for its Tour Lu, a publicity tower built in 1909. Two cranes in the former harbour, dating to the 1950s and 1960s, have also become landmarks. Recent architecture is dominated by postwar concrete reconstructions, modernist buildings and examples of contemporary architecture such as the courts of justice, designed by Jean Nouvel in 2000.
As for somewhere to stay the night, try neighbouring Angers! Bang in the middle of decent-sized, pleasant town”, behind the Hôtel de Ville, is this converted 17th century Ursuline convent, now a B&B hotel. A visitor found it “peaceful, efficiently run and reasonably priced”. Rooms are simply furnished and a little worn around the edges, but are spacious and charming; the bright large lobby is welcoming. Staff go out of their way to make guests’ stay enjoyable. There is secure parking, but cars need to be parked by 10.30pm. The continental breakfast buffet includes cereals, pastries, yoghurts but no meats or eggs. There’s no lift but rooms are available on the ground floor. For meals try La Ferme (“packed with serious local eaters”).
Good Hotel Guide - France - Angers - Hotel du Mail
