Albatros, steel alive

Project idea

Antigone is an real housing project, designed by Ricardo Bofill in the 1970's in Montpellier, France. It is a major axis that attempts to connect the historic center, the Place de la Comedie and the Esplanade Charles de Gaulle to the East of Montpellier, the Place de l'Europe, the Hotel de Région and more recent districts .

Antigone, massive, symbolizes history. It is the anchoring of the past layers of the city of Montpellier and constitutes the ideal support for a contemporary and urban architectural renewal: "the light construction movement".
Our idea was to symmetrically deposit two three-dimensional metal structures, two grids, on two buildings facing each other, to accommodate different uses. These two entities are then connected by a glass roof, a roof, which completes an underlying pedestrian traffic.

Our intention is floating, our intervention is light, moving.

Project description

Antigone suggests Roman monumental architecture throughout the history of the Ancient Mediterranean.
In our opinion, monumentality must no longer be the prerogative of a single form of society, just as there is no fascist, marxist or democratic architecture.

Less a historical overlay that a major covered urban axis, the "Albatross" enriches the city of Montpellier, like the Galeria Umberto in Naples or Paris covered passages, a duality steel - glass, connecting more two spatial dynamics that are the center and East of Montpellier, today still too enclaved in their specific social and historical.

Technical information

On the one hand, these two volumes placed on the existing take again the form and the structural frame; the intervention remains simple and allows the modularity of the project explained below.
The constructive weft is four meters over a length of ten meters per building. These dimensions make it possible to propose a varied program that will directly influence the overall picture of the project on the façade. Student housing, family housing, offices, shops, empty space, market, hall, work or urban room. The facade motif in the form of various prefabricated panels of four meters by three meters and assembled on site, offers total modularity to the project and a global architectural movement on short or long term.
Steel, both in structure and envelope, allows the quick and clean installation of panels by lifting according to the program. These panels, more or less densely open, more or less thick, accompany the urban trend in the heart of Montpellier and offer an architectural symbol dialoguing with the remarkable buildings around, such as the White Tree (Sou Fujimoto), the Corum or the Opera Comedy, and, brings a moving luminous dynamism, like the Mediterranean culture.

Affected on Antigone, disassociated from the new volumes for more modularity, the canopy, manufactured by stapled outer glass, attached to an exoskeleton, resting itself on porticoes/cantilever separated from two frames, comes to completely cover the existing place resting of a building to another. A hall or atrium with surprising but anticipated dimensions is created.
The glass panels used, chemically treated and previously calibrated in a heterogeneous manner, react to the brightness and solar radiation received in order to opacify / deopacify according to the thermal and light needs of the selected program and optimize the internal climate. A play of light and shadow settles on the interior facades of Antigone, punctuating the project with the perpetual movement of the seasons. Solar panels are used above the volumes erected to house and feed the program, bioclimatic dimension acquired under two light angles.

Co-authors

PARDONNET Sebastien
DESESSART Enzo Lucas