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1995 PROJECT

 The project for the Eastern Quarters of Sete is part of a study carried out by the Societe Campenon Bernard and Plan Construction et Architecture, as a follow-up of the Europan 2 Competition in 1991. Sete is a town of 40,000 inhabitants. It has the second largest fishing and shipping harbour in the Mediterranean Sea and it is also the base for the America's Cup sailing team of France. The town is an artificially built peninsula, cut off from the mainland by the Canal du Midi, a 17th century engineering achievement that connects the Mediterranean with the Atlantic Ocean. The competition site is a semi-abandoned industrial area, which is also the main entrance to the town. It is connected with the city centre by two congested bridges over the Canal du Midi. In the competition brief, these two bridges were replaced with a tunnel, whose entrance fell within the bounds of the competition site. The program had to include the replacement of the commercial port with a yacht harbour, the new America's Cup base, a congress hall, hotel, housing and a mixed program of shopping areas and office space. The follow-up study began with a completely different program: the tunnel has been built with an entrance that by-passed the site, the requirement for a yacht harbour was replaced with by a fishing port, and the congress hall was replaced by a fish market. It essentially meant that the follow-up study was indeed a new project. The study concentrated on two goals: it evaluated possible development strategies for the whole area (15 hectacres) and tried to position and define the housing program, to be built within the framework of the Europan Competition. The insertion of 100 apartments represented the first stage of the site's re-development. Due to the scale of the surroundings and the unfavourable character of the site, the program was organised in a large compact block. The block has a changing section: ground floor flats with gardens are raised, while the inner part of the courtyards are lowered, leaving space for parking beneath. It is a process that uses earthwork to differentiate single parts of the block, and also to give appropriate intimacy to the apartments. The study was elaborated from 1992-1995. A short time before it was completed, the city's new mayor was elected, and as with many other Europan projects, the project finished short of construction.

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