Excursion in Biel

Beau-Rivage © Y. André

Beau-Rivage © Y. André

Professor Emmanuel Rey's studio class went on an excursion in Biel. This extra-mural teaching activity was an opportunity for the students to visit various modern and contemporary operations of housing, activity building, and public space coming into close resonance with the issues explored within the framework of the RHODANIE URBAINE design studio.

Architectural design is expected to play an important part in the search for alternatives to reorient urban development through densification strategies. By an approach at different scales, LAST's studio aims precisely at analyzing, exploring and experimenting specific issues to this contribution of architecture to the sustainability of urban areas.

It is in this spirit that this excursion in Biel was designed, with the objective of enabling students to discover different projectual issues related to urban densification and interact with practicing architects involved in such projects. The program of the day included a presentation of the Agglolac urban project’s approach and a visit to the "Beau-Rivage" housing by Yves Baumann and Roberto Pascual from the Bauzeit office, a visit to a residential building at Rue de Fribourg by Stephan Buchhofer and Florence Mani from the bartbuchhofer office and a visit to the Tréfileries neighborhood by Gilles Marchand from the Kistler Vogt office.

These multiple approaches helped to put into perspective issues of conceptual coherence, built morphology, spatiality, typology, and expression with broader themes related to the mutation processes of many urban areas.