Revisiting urbanity on sloping sites
Quartier Boisy-Pierrefleur © EPFL / LAST
As part of its latest issue on the theme of ground floors, the journal TRACES invited the “Reliefs urbains” research project team from the Laboratory of Architecture and Sustainable Technologies (LAST), to share their thoughts on neighborhoods with an urban character that combine steep slopes and ground-floor quality. Entitled “Revisiter l’urbanité dans la pente”, the article co-authored by Clément Cattin, Martine Laprise and Emmanuel Rey is now available online.
The slope is omnipresent in Swiss cities, and has historically been an asset for symbolic, strategic or climatic reasons. Since the 20th century, urban expansion towards the slopes, encouraged by the automobile, has often led to peripheral neighborhoods with little activity, where ground floors are predominantly residential and public spaces are scarce. Perceived today as a constraint, the slope nevertheless offers opportunities to enrich and diversify the urban character of portions of the city, notably through careful design of ground floors and high-quality outdoor public spaces.
The Lausanne neighborhoods of Riant-Mont and Boisy-Pierrefleur are successful examples of this approach. In Riant-Mont, terraced gardens and shared spaces help integrate urban villas into the landscape. In Boisy-Pierrefleur, the buildings follow the natural slope, alternating between housing, shops, and green public areas. These examples show that when topography is thoughtfully designed at the neighborhood scale, it can create a rich and diverse urban environment well-suited to today’s climatic challenges.
These issues of slope constraints resonate with the "Reliefs urbains" research and teaching project, which explores, through a variety of complementary investigations, the multiple challenges and potentialities associated with the transition of neighborhoods set into the slope, in particular those located close to decarbonized public transport.