Tram station, Nice

The city of Nice, hidden among steep hills and the sea, lacks a space to accommodate large infrastructures.

The project, moulded by this restriction, is installed in a residual space wedged between a highway, its access roads and imposing housing buildings. Interwoven in a complex geometry is the maintenance centre for the tram, parking lot and station terminal station of the line.

The project deeply pierces the slope, releases a gap in its centre, where sun and air can penetrate. Broad shafts of light pass through all levels and complete the system. The built spaces are directly moulded by the presence of flows over the place, both in its exterior, highway and access road to the hills, and the inside, by the displacement of the trams, cars in the parking lot and pedestrians. In this way, the movement is printed on the built space, staged, designed as a generator of this part of the landscape.

The project, therefore, is not just a building, but a set of elements that answer and regulate passenger and functional problems. It wraps around existing infrastructure, and connects successive levels of city and hill. This fact resonates with existing public spaces, energises the neighbourhood for the implementation of trade and complementary equipment and stages spectacular views over the city, the hills and the sea.

Design process

An error in the viability study triggered a process of a completely atypical conception. The land initially selected for the operation was too small to service centre!

It was necessary, therefore, to find a new spot and adjust the program to the new potential of the site.

As a result, the tram line, which terminated before this urban cutoff, has been extended to the foot of houses.

The parking lot finds its place at the motorway exit on the roof of the maintenance center, the command post and its offices, these last ones were re-located and coming from the centre. A socio cultural centre is set up on the flat roofs to complete the lack of public facilities in the neighbourhood.

The project enabled a social dimension to our intervention.

An intervention, which consolidated a neighbourhood essentially marked by the violence of the road network, connects the housing complex to the city and gives a new identity to the neighbourhood. Noise pollution has been reduced by the mask effect of building set on the edge of the highway. The project is partly buried, leaving free views from the houses. It benefits from good thermal inertia, reinforced by the type of roof planned. Most of the spaces have natural ventilation. The façades of the control tower are well breathable or protected by parasols. A portion of the rainwater is absorbed by the green roof or recovered for irrigation in the city

In conclusion

We have been able to choose the place of operation, develop a new programme, making our own, a project that is not only a technical infrastructure, but also a project of architecture, landscape, and urban project.