Marseille an archipelago
Marseille 2013
Master Thesis ENSA
DATA.
Master Thesis
ENSA Marseille
type
for
Collective housing in urban context
The topic of LAB43 department, during my Master’s studies, was Metropolitan Development of Marseilles through urban evolution of the periphery and social housing. Masters project was developed in two stages: 1. Hypothesis of urban development of Northern Districts, as the place of concentration of Social Housing 2. Architectural project of Social Housing in accordance with general urban conception.
Context:
The Northern part of the city was Urbanized during the massive wave of worker's immigration during the industrialization of the 60s. Instead of being integrated into the social and urban life through their immersion in all neighborhoods they were concentrated on the periphery. What created a sort of isolated ghetto.
Northern Districts was urbanized by a juxtaposition of mono-functional areas which are impervious one to another and externally connected only by highways. The rigidity of such division with a fragmentation of space, erected into a system, denies the essential part of an urban phenomenon: the ability of the same place to receive multiple activities and different people.
Archipelago theory:
We took the Archipelago theory as a main idea of the project. According to which Archipelago is the is a chain, cluster or collection of islands relatively close to each other but isolated. Where each island, a part of the archipelago is an autonomous unit and can function independently, but together they all form a powerful unbreakable chain, where each element reinforces another.
We found this isolation but at the same time the potential of connection very similar to the urban development of Northern Marseilles.
Factors of isolation:
We then analysed different cutting and isolation factors which retain Marseilles from becoming an Archipelago in order to understand and then to transform them into connection potential.
The main factors that we could highlight are:
The Industrial Port of Marseilles which cut an access to the sea,
The transport system, especially Highways and Railways crossing the territories without connecting most of the specific points,
Isolation of the Northern part by its particular landscape, where high hills and lowlands separate one housing group from another,
Derelict green natural massifs generating alienation zones.
Potential of future connection:
On the other hand, all those factors could be perceived as a potential of future connection of an Urban Archipelago and become an engine for the projects.
This first Urban stage might become an engine for the second Architectural stage localized into the Project of Development of a New Housing Group or of Renovation and Revitalization of already Existing Housing
