MARCO   ZANINI 

0. Plan de Campagne is a huge commercial site, shaped in a triangle, grown up about fifty years ago in the middle of a beautiful provencal landscape. It is messy, a bit out-of-date, most of the time clogged by traffic and completely inhospitable for pedestrians.

 

1. This kind of commercial space is nowadays confronting with a general shrinking tendency and with new emerging consumerism directions. The trend is to buy generally less and more often, to shop more on the web, maybe using shops as place where to see and try goods even without buying.

Commercial centres are facing the necessity to become more pleasant places, where to spend free time in different and more sophisticated ways and where to try to experiment new forms of contemporary shopping.

 

2. The structure of the site is completely economical, a sequence of equal boxes with some resulting spaces in-between.

It's really difficult to think any kind of direct relation with the landscape all around without considering the substantial difference between the elements: the first one made of sensitive, physical matches, the second of rough abstract rules.

 

3. We compared Plan de Campagne to two examples of similar space in Milan, a commercial axe and a fair, organized within a similar structure.

Corso Buenos Aires is the biggest commercial axe in the centre of the city while the new fair is a trade show space in the periphery.

 

4. Our project wants to reflect both on these two main questions: how to adjust the commercial and public space to contemporary requirements and future previsions? how to find relations with the exterior?

 

5. At the moment, we have on the site a built part, complex, uncontrollable and deeply related to the market, and an in-between ground without any sort of general structure and spatial quality.

The main idea of the project is to keep the built as it is and to work on the unbuilt surface, providing a new infrastructure of connective and quality public space to the site.

 

6. We conceived a 20 years strategy divided into 3 main phases.

 

The first phase, in a prevision of 3-5 years, is about the strip. We imagine to strengthen the tram connection with the site and to provide two parking silos at the ends of the strip.

As we can see in comparison with the two examples, the length of that strip has a strong potential in becoming a feasible pedestrian axe. The project of a new section for the strip is the most important tool of this phase.

 

The second phase, conceivable in 5-10 years, consists of a new train station on the southern side of the triangle. That will further enhance the public connection with the site.

The station will be connected with the strip with a first branch that pass through the big parking area in front of Barneoud shopping mall.

On this huge parking surface we think to displace the main reference point of our project, a steel box in the same language of the neighbours, with inside an accurate reproduction of a breathtaking Mediterranean landscape. We imagine the garden enclosed by mirror walls suggesting an infinite, abstract extension of the landscape inside the box.

The pavilion will host services for the public and exhibition spaces.

We want to suggest that the commercial site may find a relation with the landscape only in an abstract, mediated way. As in an artistic operation, we would like to propose more conscious relations between the existent elements on the site.

The addition of a tertiary pole close to the new station, toward Septemes-Les Vallons try to break the strong separation between the village and commercial centre.

 

The third step, possible in a longer forecast of about 20 years, consists in an extended ramification of the strip with a second section guideline for the secondary streets.

These branches will have some tapis-roulant and some covered porticos whith shopping pavilions and showcases where to experiment possible alternatives to traditional shopping.

Two branches will follow the GR13 and will go out directly into the landscape.