Manon Darde

"How the notion of time can reshape our way of seeing the architectural project?"

In the present time the projects respond to a real need – the space for building an historical Basque wooden boat during the next ten years. The notion of time is at the core of the project’s thinking, calling us back into the past but also projecting us into the future and the evolution of the spaces created.

The project takes place in an area not really defined where cars have taken the main role. But just like the proposed program, the site has been able to adapt to the needs of the inhabitants, a former fishing port that has become a popular place to swim in the summer.

In view of the evolution of the harbor of Socoa, we wanted to think a project that would be able to adapt to the times. «Le Cocon» or space of the present, is placed at the heart of the project. Its limited presence in time pitched by the project owner (ten years) represents a transition movement between past and future.

Team: 3 architects + 5 engineers

"Thinking a design and a construction system in time, anticipating its reconversion for a sustainable city.""

"Reintroducing industry in the city mesh"

The project is developed in three sequences that resonate with the site: the levee, the refit and the workshop. Each of these programs reflects a temporality, the levee embodies the past materiality of the site, the refit installs the construction of the boat in the present time and then the workshop prepares the future of the harbor of Socoa. Indeed, the know-how developed within this program is a real investment for the return of a naval construction industry in the South of France.

The shape of the refit then reveals itself as an infrastructure allowing the project to be semi-buried while gaining height for the shipyard and preserving a panorama over the bay of Socoa. This refit also makes it possible to facilitate the launching of the boats. After ten years, the dismountable nature of the wooden architecture of the shed leaves the choice of whether or not to preserve this space on the site. Its footprint gives way to the shape of the refit, which turns into a pool at the rhythm of the tides and becomes a real public space.