Nice Thiers Train Station

Our project is a suture integrating  a new mixed use complex gathering public realm, retail, offices and a boutique hotel at the heart of the city center of Nice.

The site is encompassed between railways, a ring road and the city.  It appears as an accidental gap in the urban frame, the evidence of a discontinuous urban development. To provide an answer to the question of orientation/isolation, two observations triggered the design of our project. Firstly, the pivotal position of the site, where Nice’s main shopping street meets the railway station. The second observation is that infrastructures isolate the north of the city from the historical south. It results in a lack of engagement with the surrounding public domain. The initial complexity of the site suggested a simple, yet effective design. It is the translation of infrastructural and metropolitan issues.

The opportunity to build a new program will enhance accessibility and reinvigorate the site, increase attractiveness of the infrastructure. Both the existing station and the new mixed-use complex will form a continuous network. Therefore in our project, the terminal and landside programs are consolidated into a single linear promenade. The retail program in the ground floor seeks to connect the project seamlessly with his surroundings. Then mixed-use program programs generate three-dimensional undulations which allow to reconnect the site to the north part of the city, while giving to the station an attractive urban façade on Jean Médecin Avenue and providing residents, tourists, and travelers with a dynamic new public agora that achieves a strong interaction between the interior program and his environment.

Like an optical illusion the new corner creates a welcoming entrance point, inviting travelers and visitors inside. We propose to update the Nice’s «trompe l’oeil» reinterpreting this strategic angle as a reflection of urban life.

Rather than becoming just an infrastructural node, the new complex is shaped to promote public life, turning constraints into freedom for social interaction. Modernity is thus a spontaneous process.

credits

Architects: Clément Blanchet Architecture
Client: ALTAREA COGEDIM
Nature of the operation: Developer competition
Realised in: 2016
Site: Gare Nice Thiers, Avenue Jean Médecin
Program: Mixed use. 15.000m²
Budget: 35 Millions Euros

TEAM COMPOSITION

Engineering: Bollinger + Grohmann and Alto Ingénierie
Sustainability: AIA Studio Environnement
Landscape: Michel Pena