Lyon Half-Dieu City Buying Middle / MVRDV

Textual content description offered by the architects. MVRDV has accomplished the transformation of the La Half-Dieu city purchasing middle in Lyon, France. The challenge has remodeled the unique constructing from the Seventies, “re-socializing” the purchasing middle and remodeling Lyon’s metropolis middle. Whereas sustainably reusing a big quantity of the prevailing constructing’s supplies, the design rearranges inside packages, provides extra space, replaces a redundant automobile park, inserts massive home windows, refreshes the attribute previous concrete façade, and provides an expansive rooftop park related to town by monumental stairs. With this intensive transformation, a constructing that was as soon as an obstruction to Lyon’s vitality is poised to start a brand new chapter as a vibrant metropolis middle attraction.

Designed in an period when vehicles dominated metropolis planning, the unique design of La Half-Dieu was an introverted behemoth – it was among the many largest city purchasing facilities in Europe, but had little connection to the streets round it. The transformation replaces the previous automobile park and rearranges the constructing’s inside areas to rationalize circulation, whereas new extensions additionally add an additional 32,000 sq. meters of leasable area to the prevailing 130,000 sq. meters.

Regardless of the dramatic transformation, the design retains the historical past of the constructing. The concrete panels that composed the distinctive authentic façade have been preserved and reused consistent with round economic system ideas, retaining the sample of interlocking rectangles that characterised the unique constructing’s placing visible identification. These concrete panels, which beforehand have been a boring beige, at the moment are contemporary and white. They’re additionally replicated on the extensions, with a contemporary twist; on the entrances and different key places, the façade ‘evaporates’ to disclose massive home windows, reinforcing the constructing’s openness, making a bodily and symbolic gesture heralding the gateway to a revitalized Lyon Half-Dieu.

One other vital ingredient of the transformation is discovered on the roof: grand staircases rise subsequent to the purchasing middle’s fundamental entrances, resulting in a multi-level rooftop backyard that connects three sides of the constructing. With eating places and cafés in addition to inexperienced areas, snug seating, and play areas for kids, these rooftops and terraces change into a real piece of town, connecting elements of town – together with town’s fundamental Half-Dieu practice station – that have been beforehand indifferent from each other. Folks can now take a number of routes by means of or over the constructing to cross the huge website; the purchasing middle turns into a sort of public plateau, a vantage level that enables individuals to orient themselves throughout the metropolis.

The transformation of Lyon Half-Dieu reveals how the city errors of earlier eras will be sustainably assimilated into the trendy metropolis. Somewhat than demolish and construct anew an space that’s the equal of round 12 metropolis blocks, the design retains the prevailing construction, together with a lot of its façade, and avoids the numerous quantities of embodied carbon that rebuilding would in any other case create.