Saint-Quentin-Fallavier | 2024

The municipality of Saint-Quentin-Fallavier is located in the northern part of the Isère department within the CAPI (Communauté d’Agglomération Porte de l’Isère). As part of its ongoing development, the municipality is reinventing itself through an ambitious urban redevelopment project for its town centre.

This major project addresses multiple challenges:

Requalify the town centre to create a structuring and identity-defining public space
Provide a public meeting place for the town’s various events
Completely reorganize parking possibilities to optimize the quality of the urban spaces
Rethink the positioning and commercial attractiveness of the town centre.

Within this ambitious urban and landscape project, the architectural intervention consists of creating:
A new welcoming canopy for the Tilleuls School.
A new building for commercial use.

THE CANOPY
The canopy is designed as a line in the landscape, subtly highlighting the iconic silhouette of the castle as from the square and creating a physical link with the other elements of the square. Its height is calibrated based on the architectural composition of the town hall façade, providing a “reference height” also mirrored in the shopping hall.

We use natural and local construction materials to perpetuate the emblematic craftsmanship of the region and avoid introducing a new architectural language on this already complex square. The aim is to develop a sober, unobtrusive architecture to create a unified whole.For the canopy, the built elements consist of :

Wood for the structural canopy layer
Rammed earth for the peripheral walls
Metal for the columns and locksmithing
Polycarbonate panels for the roof.

THE SHOPPING HALL

The proportions of this building are simple and perfectly integrated into the composition of the urban block. It adopts the design codes of a market hall:

• A central position
• A simple volumetry
• A gable roof with wooden framing
• Gable facades adorned with a large arched opening echoing the church’s architecture
• Side facades generously open to the landscape areas

As with the canopy, natural materials are preferred:

• Load-bearing walls made of unstabilized rammed earth sourced locally or from excavation sites, which is an ecological and natural material historically prevalent in northern Isère
• A structural frame with solid wood rafters
• Roof insulation using straw bales
• A mechanical flaked tile roof with resolutely contemporary edge details

This architecture is deeply connected to its territory, perfectly integrated into its environment, and fully committed to being “sustainable.”

Category:Urban Planning/Landscape ArchitectureLocation:FranceArchitect: Julien Giammarchi, FranceDesign Team: Julien Giammarchi, Berengere Pasquier, Line Chamond, Anais Buckinx, Martina Shileva,Photographer: Collection Architectes