The project revisits a high-rise building of the 1970s Tour Bretagne in the center of the French city of Nantes. The tower suffers from the problematic modernist creed of functional separation, which prevents the structure from being integrated into the urban fabric. The building is currently paralyzing the entire downtown district.

The scheme aims to transform the existing structure into a “vertical city,” filled with multiple activities. The proposed design deploys public space as a means to link the existing cityscape with the new public spaces of the tower.

Read project feature in 4th Holcim Awards 2014/2015 (flip-book)

The winning projects of the Holcim Awards 2014 for Europe illustrate how sustainable construction continues to evolve – developing more sophisticated and multi-disciplinary responses to the challenges facing the building and construction industry. An ecological reserve and remediation project in Southern Italy, a low-cost flexible university building in Paris, and a participatory urban neighborhood in Vienna won gold, silver and bronze.

Grégoire Arthuis thinks that consideration of existing structures and environmental performance are the starting points of sustainable construction. “Vertical Restructuring: High-rise tower rehabilitation, Nantes, France” was applauded by the jury for using a process of transformation rather than erasure.

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The jury read the project as a kind of manifesto that questions the tenets of the Modern Movement and proposing instead an understanding of architecture enriched by multifunctional relationships, social interaction, and spatial sequences. The project presents a strategy of how to deal with the built legacy of the post-war era, without destroying its substance – a process of transformation rather than erasure.

The project revisits a high-rise building of the 1970s “Tour Bretagne” in the center of the city of Nantes, France. The tower suffers from the problematic modernist creed of functional separation, which prevents the structure from being integrated into the urban fabric. The building is currently paralyzing the entire downtown district. The scheme aims to transform the existing structure into a “vertical city”, filled with multiple activities. The proposed design deploys public space as a means to link the existing cityscape with the new public spaces of the tower.