This urban plaza proposal is located at the heart of Tremblay, one of the last French cities on slab. The city’s center is dense with little vegetation and is fully pedestrian, which consigns car parking to underground areas. Unlike other French cities, Tremblay did not experience the expansion of slab urbanism and it was only limited to the narrow limits of its central core. Following this ephemeral movement, the city quickly resumed with its development on natural soil and today, thirty years later, its central areas on slab are in desperate need of regeneration. As such, a new cycle of life of their public spaces is rising, especially as the zone now acquired a historical dimension. Our proposal is both simple and user-friendly, catering for a warm atmosphere thanks to the space’s geometry as well as the use of wood decking. Far from being taken as a constraint, the issue of pedestrian accessibility between the plaza and the adjacent street is solved with a ramp truly acting as an urban piece which elegantly unfolds on the plaza itself. The softscape component expresses the place’s specificity, with a play of full soil depth gardens around the access ramp and a series of elevated planters on the plaza itself. The facades of the adjacent city hall and theater offer colors and visibility to these two institutions, in close correlation to the neighboring public space.
Tremblay’s Urban Plaza
