Les Terrasses

The urban planning team Treuttel-Garcias-Treuttel et associés has designed a project of urban recomposition around twenty landscaped terraces, which run from the Arche to the Seine in Nanterre.

Like a backbone, this vast public space recreates lateral connections between the neighborhoods and restores the links with La Défense and the Seine. The Terrasses are built as the residential and office buildings that border them are constructed.

A project structuring the territory

• The Terrasses sequence located at the foot of the Arche de La Défense. A 600-meter long promenade bridges the difference in level between the Arche and Aimé Césaire Boulevard.
• The Terrasses de l'Arche starts on the boulevard Aimé Césaire and ends in a belvedere, 6 meters above the place Nelson Mandela. This height makes it possible to take advantage of the view towards the Seine and the Arche and to install business premises under the Terrace. An alternation of housing and offices, with commercial first floors and facilities. An area has even been developed on the Terrace opposite the housing.
• The Terrasses de l'Université are treated on the theme of "country gardens". A playground, and a planted walkway, which invites you to stroll around. It is connected to the Cœur de quartier project, but also to the Université Paris Ouest Nanterre-La Défense and the Cité des Provinces Françaises.

From a technical point of view...

The A14 freeway runs under the Terrasses. For safety reasons, it is therefore impossible to build on the Terrasses, but only on the edge of them. The building blocks, measuring 98 meters by 24 meters, meet specific urban requirements: mandatory alignment on the first floor, mandatory setbacks on the upper floors, and climatic protection by canopy. The principle adopted by the Treuttel-Garcias-Treuttel team is based on an asymmetrical treatment of the axis, with the building on the north side only, thus offering a long linear facade on the sunny side, and on the creation of 17 large urban terraces, following the morphology of the terrain (50 m difference in level between the base of the Arche and the Seine)

A Terrace is divided into five parallel strips corresponding to five different layouts:

• the boulevard of Pesaro, 22 meters wide, with an alignment of lime trees and lampposts, a two-way street with parking,
• a sidewalk with a bicycle path, the 7-meter wide valley, a densely planted garden, inaccessible to the public,
• 30 meter wide planted terraces with crossings for perpendicular traffic,
• the 20-meter pedestrian walkway, which offers a double route along the terraces,
• along each new building, the stairs that provide a horizontal space for the development of commercial first floors.

Water management is a fundamental element in the development of the project. Rainwater is collected and stored after filtering, for watering, avoiding the discharge of fertilizers to the sewer. An overflow to the valley allows storm water to be retained for a few hours in order to control the flow to the public sewerage system.