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In Bastia – Haute-Corse, France – the redevelopment project of the southern cove of the Old Port and the northern facade of the citadel was inaugurated by Pierre Savelli, mayor of Bastia and Gilles Simeoni, President of the Executive of Corsica in February 2020, and allows a harmonious connection between the “Terra Nova” – the citadel – and the “Terra Vecchia” – the port.
Since its inception, the site has undergone several modifications, transformations and reorganizations, carried out according to the various urban developments and the military occupation of the city of Bastia. The ramparts, were built under the authority of the French, towards the end of the 18th and the beginning of the 19th century, to form a defensive enclosure of the Palace in the form of a half-bastion, equipped with a high and low battery.ipé d’une batterie haute et basse.
The Mantinum project - Latin name for Bastia - at the initiative of the city of Bastia is therefore a fascinating project due to its various interventions and its multiple challenges.
This achievement was designed by the Buzzo Spinelli Architecture agency, in association with the Antoine Dufour Architectes agency. Its objective was to create an open-air theater, as well as a vertical link between the old port and the open-air theater with the landscape restoration of the Romieu garden.
It is a real privilege to have such a powerful site, to serve a program whose subject is precisely its geography, its history and its future. Despite the diversity of the different actions required "this has led us to design our different interventions as a single project whose spirit, materiality and didactic character serve as a common thread through the different geographical and historical contexts, with a level difference of more than 35 meters” says Philippe Clément, engineer and manager of the Batiserf structural design office.
From a heritage point of view, it is a project that will enhance and enrich the existing heritage of the city.
The development of a Verdure theater, at the foot of the Governors Palace in the citadel district, with a breathtaking view of the old port and the Mediterranean, was also on the program of this beautiful project.
At the end of the paths of the extension of the Romieu garden, formerly the Governors' garden, we find the outdoor theater consisting of a stage located in the North, associated with a set of 16 rows of terraces facing the old Port, where 600 people can sit.
The bleachers are made up of steps and risers in reinforced concrete from the site cast in place, the steps depths are 84cm and 48cm heights. The last eight rows of steps consist of a vegetated surface equal to a width of 56cm and a mineral surface in reinforced concrete site cast in place with a width equal to 28cm corresponding to the width of the risers.
The restoration of the Romieu garden also gives place to a very present vegetation. A true haven of peace where it is good to walk, created by the landscape designer Aurélien Albert from Atelier Gama.
This is how a large elevator is held which connects the Old Port of Bastia to the Place du Donjon in the citadel. It is at the top that there is a balcony with breathtaking views. Unity and coherence are the guidelines of this project, by creating vertical and horizontal links. There is a desire to improve travel and the living environment. The possibility of moving from North to South and from top to bottom is given to people with reduced mobility with an enhancement of heritage and a revitalization of the citadel.
Integrated into the rock of the cliff, the vertical connection tool forming a new 30.00m high contemporary tower of the Citadel, with a trapezoidal base, is intended to house the urban elevator and its escape crinoline ladders. As a veritable defensive structure located in line of the rampart surrounding the Palace, this slender structure brings together all the existing structures in extension, in which the mechanized elevator is placed, providing a vertical link between the “Terra Vecchia” and the "Terra Nova". When it emerges from the profile of the existing cliff, the two west and east side walls continue to the south to connect perfectly with the profile of the cliff and the walls of the existing ramparts made of large stone masonry.
Associated in a coherent and unitary manner with the Aldilonda project with its footbridge running alongside the cliff at water level, the vertical link tool opens up the port and revitalizes the citadel by allowing everyone a loop path between the coast and the top of the ramparts.
For not modifying the existing perspectives and to integrate harmoniously into the surrounding buildings with high heritage value, the project foresaw the creation of a succession of stages evoking the entry into a citadel: previously, it was rather contradictory to create a gate in a citadel.
Capturing the genius of the place of such a site is not only a matter of form, materiality or color relationships. It is through the material and its implementation, in memory of local know-how, reinvented with contemporary techniques. It is by working all the elements of the project with a single material, based on a site concrete called "dry”, implemented for vertical structures using horizontal layers, which are tightened by ramming with a pneumatic crusher, that new constructions take up perfectly on the site.
The concrete is formulated with a low Water / Binder ratio between 0.30 and 0.40, for a dry implementation consistency (opposed to a “cast” implementation), like a rammed earth wall, by horizontal layers maximum height 0.16m, which is tightened manually by tamping with an electro-pneumatic foundry crusher. This traditional method of implementation, historically used for the first concrete structures, has disappeared in favor of the implementation of concrete clamping with a vibrating poker more suited to industrial production methods.
This concrete is also made with materials from the excavations of the cliff necessary for the realization of the Vertical Connection Tool based on cipolins and lustrous shales, crushed and screened in a quarry near the site. The materiality of this "site" concrete implemented by horizontal layers constitutes a contemporary and artisanal reinterpretation in the noble sense of local and historical typologies at the service of a very particular program, to constitute a clear, ordered and balanced whole, perfectly integrated in its environment, part of a movement of "modern vernacular architecture", without any pastiche.
The use of the site's concrete is an advantage for sustainable development, there is no extraction on another site and at the same time there is a restoration of colors that are in harmony with the rock that already exists on the site. The aim of the Mantinum project is to be very integrated with the citadel. This is how the built volumes, including the new Lower Door, the New Tower of the Vertical Connection Tool and the Upper Door constituting the new soft link between the “Terra Nova” and the “Terra Vecchia”, come under the same sober and orderly typology, for a mineral appearance based on site concrete with a raw, mold-hardened finish and a stamped appearance. In the same logic, this same and unique material was used to make the steps, ramps, terraces, bleachers, walls, pedestrian paths at the top of the site and the “Théâtre de Verdure”.
The project as a whole is characterized by its simplicity and discretion, the Citadel and the Old Port reign in their territory, the architectural volumes added to their footing and nearby are neither talkative nor out of scale: they are simple, both in their form and in their materiality, at the level of the site.
It is an ecological approach that guided the environmental design of the project. Technical installations must be as simple as possible and maintenance operations must be reduced to the strict minimum. A well-built, resistant architecture, using as much as possible "natural" materials, easy to install and durable, requiring no maintenance was the wish of the designers, architects and engineers of this project. The Mantinum is a unitary project and perfectly integrated into its geographical and historical environment, a real harmonious “walk” between the “Terra Nova” and the “Terra Vecchia”.
Photographer: © Célia Uhalde
Program: Creation of a green theater, a vertical link between the Old Port and the Place du Donjon of the citadel and the restoration of the Romieu Garden
Awarding authority: Commune de Bastia
Project managers : Buzzo Spinelli, associé à Antoine Dufour Architectes, ACMH cotraitant, Atelier GAMA paysagistes, Batiserf (BET Structure), BETEM (VRD).
Companies: Brando BTP – Contact construction (Terrassements généraux /GO/VRD) ; Socofer (Serrurerie / Signalétique), Schindler (Ascenseur), Technic Alarm (Réseaux secs / Eclairage public) ; Corse paysage (Espaces Verts / Arrosage / Mobilier).
Cost: 3,5 millions d’euros € HT
Calendar: 14 months
The restructuring and extension project of the Beaucastel estate in Courthézon, for the Perrin Family, and located in the heart of the Quaternary Terrace known as Châteauneuf du Pape, was a new opportunity to develop an innovative and contemporary approach to ancestral construction processes with the architects Studio Mumbai Architects and Studio Mediterranée Architectes.
The great quality and richness of this site has strongly influenced the architectural and constructive reflection. Our real desire is to build authentic, unique and contemporary buildings, based on construction processes allowing the use and enhancement of exceptional natural building materials, present in large quantities on this site. Accomplished by enhancing the soil and the environment, the geo-sourced materials of the site come from the works, excavation and demolition with the structural work company: FAYAT BATIMENT.
The major construction issue of the project is the use of aggregates from the excavations of the earthworks of the project and the crushing of the demolition products of the existing buildings for the preparation of "site" concrete of hydraulic binder white cement for the realization of the columns, walls and vaults without project reinforcements.
© Batiserf
These materials are stored and undergo preparation operations carried out on a plot at 1 km from the site, including screening, crushing and mixing operations before being mixed on site using a site concrete plant, dedicated specifically to the manufacture of this concrete.
The use of these resources according to a logic of recycling is doubly virtuous, avoiding, on the one hand, the dumping of materials considered as waste and, on the other hand, the extraction and transformation of natural resources which are by definition limited.
These first prototypes were produced in accordance with the formulations specifically developed for the project and validated by mechanical tests carried out in the laboratory and on site, to guarantee perfect reproducibility and transferability between laboratory tests, full-scale test prototypes on site carried out in real conditions and the final work in site concrete tightened by tamping.
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