ANMA’s reflections on maximum height for the future Bercy district (above the railway lines) provided a new way of organising this neighbourhood into a well-spaced, open, yet dense, mixed-use site that prolongs the existing Parisian fabric around it.
We opted for an urban plan that prolongs the aims of the APUR and stresses the connection between the city and the suburb through a strong linear continuity in the street façades, which run at 30 m high, and the typology of an urban block around a courtyard.
Exceeding the imposed height of 37 mhowever, enables creation of higher, denser buildings which free up space on the ground to create green continuities and visual openings that add quality to the dwellings (perspectives between the courtyards, a succession of gardens, a new private-public boundary, neighbourhood unity).
The residential tower blocks stand 37 to 50 m high (below the IGH* level) and are located at strategic points to make the most of views, sunlight and infrastructures. These specific buildings can be conceived with a mixed programme of shops (from 0 to 10 m), offices (from 10 to 25 m) and dwellings (from 25 to 50 m). This mixed-use dimension allows for creation of the urban “seams” needed in what can be a very distended or else highly constrained Parisian fabric. They therefore fulfil a diverse number of situations in a single point insertion (like acupuncture) to form the urban continuities and the visual landmarks that create urbanity.
At Bercy we thus highlighted the green continuity of the petite ceinture (disused railway line) by placing three specific “blade” buildings along the route and at the crossroads with the other streets. These 50-metre-high buildings are a mixed programme that create the density of use and the urban landmarks needed to render each block legible. In a totally different register, at the corner of the péripherique ring road and the Bercy-Charenton quays we propose two very high-rise buildings (the twin terrace towers) that qualify this dual-traffic crossroads. These buildings adopt Haussmann-style angles, though on a different scale; they mark the corner, and each are oriented to “look out on” a different direction, one towards southern Paris, the other towards Charenton. They are destined for offices, with the lower levels devoted to colloquiums. Careful treatment of the base of these towers involves a large planted terrace that can be accessed by users and is directly linked to the tree-lined N91 bastion.
The contact between the towers and the circular street (former interchange) at the foot of the périphérique is ensured by large double-height service kiosks in the planted terrace that provide a human scale at the base of these very high-rise buildings.
*Immeuble de Grande Hauteur: high-rise building