The lemanic arc has some kind of new condition of cityness.
As a manifestation of the horizontal metropolis it is more landscape than city. It is diffuse, parc-like and urban. Careful identification and intensification of the many elements shaping that landscape is seen as a necessary approach for them to enter in positive contradictions, and as such perform as concrete pieces of the city.
Thus we try to understand to what extend an urban approach of architecture is still possible by defining it as one amongst other fragments of the landscape; in between nature and culture, fabrics and infrastructure, permanences and happenings. A research on the positive large.
Eventually choosing Saint-Saphorin as the case study, and addressing the restrictions imposed by the site’s own abundant heritage, contextualism is tackled by reading the site through architecture’s own means. By drawing our context from it, we address a new program of a bigger scale aiming to touch upon ‘contemporary realities'. Former elements are reused as the tools for the project, ultimately questioning their limits and underlining their potential resilience.