For an architect, the line is a basic work
tool: in reading the physical world as well as in
designing projects. For Marc Barani, the king of
all lines is the horizon. To this French architect
born in Menton, the horizon is far more than
just the apparent junction between
earth and sky; it speaks to our individual
sphere of perception, it suggests
a passing from full to empty, it
activates our imagination and opens
a dream world. Barani’s horizon is a
reference point, a point of equilibrium,
but also the threshold to the world of
the unknown. This description reveals
much of the multifaceted sensitivity
cultivated by Barani the set designer,
anthropology scholar and architect. His range
of interests and culture give him a non-compartmentalised
vision of things: Barani is an
architect-humanist who is just as comfortable
dissecting urban material and density as discussing
undetermined places.
In this recent project for the City of Nice,
his wide-ranging grasp of situations has led him
to transform a commission for a technical piece
of infrastructure into a project that resolves
aspects of architecture, landscape architecture
and urban planning, besides satisfying
the city’s primary request – all made possible
thanks to the fortunate coincidence of finding a
perspicacious and receptive public client.
Back in 1999, Nice’s municipality had
selected a site for a new tram maintenance
centre, only to discover that it was too small.
The choice of a more suitable area north of
the city became an opportunity to
rethink the programme’s requirements
under the guidance of Barani,
aimed at optimising the new site’s
potential. This meant developing the
project in an atypical way, adapting
to a neighbourhood that was missing
the most essential of open spaces and
services.
The “Comte de Falicon” tram
terminal (including the terminus tram
stop, a maintenance department, a park-andride
parking lot, offices, control rooms for tramway
traffic, small-scale commerce and, coming
soon, a socio-cultural centre) has risen from a
nondescript, degraded site on a hill between
the highway and a series of “cigarette box”
residential high-rises built in the ’60s and ’70s
that have remained unattached to Nice’s urban
fabric ever since. The project has made use of
the site’s entire outline, taking advantage of its
shape to link the flows of comings and goings
in a sequence of architectural orchestrations
that are high and low, open and closed, aboveground
and underground. The side of the hill
was excavated to make room for the terminal,
which fans out in an intersection of many levels
and many perspectives, but which favours
a direct view of the sea, seen way at the end of
the road that comes out of the same hill, sloping
down towards the precious Mediterranean
horizon. In the centrifugal movement activated
by the complex, the “rejected” agglomerate of
large blocks of flats is sucked up by the city and
reconnected to it; the highway comes to a junction
and a motorway entrance that are worthy of
the new centre; an exit lends access to an easyuse
parking lot; the hill’s vegetation continues
on the garden roofs of the low-rise buildings;
pedestrians are treated to clear walking routes;
and the tram maintenance crews work in halls
full of natural light.
Exposed cement with a Brutalist feel is an
important element in Barani’s work – crisp, with
hard horizontal planes and sharp-edged corners.
Especially impressive is the way the public
routes efficiently snake through the area’s
65,000 square metres, something that could
have easily turned into a labyrinth of lost steps.
Here, we see Barani the anthropologist, attentive
to social life and the use of public space, a
gift that was sensitised during his study year in
Nepal during the ’80s.
High-performance tram terminal in Nice
Dug into the hillside, Marc Barani’s large project has all its appendages in the right places: urban planning, architecture, landscaping and infrastructure. Design Atelier Marc Barani. Text Rita Capezzuto. Photos Serge Demailly.
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- 15 October 2008