Waking up in Anthropcene! Reshaping an industrial eco system in port industrial areas
SYMBIOTIC BOOM! seeks resilience! Anthropocene’s state is critical, but not lost. Bassens represents a way to rebuild a society that is more sustainable, attractive and inclusive. At the nexus of biotic and abiotic infrastructures, the industrial port territory has the potential to transcend an ownership economy into an economy of usage, through bountiful land and logistic infrastructures. To rethink an urbanized Gaia, we need to reinstate collaborative intelligence in human and natural systems.
Regional
France
Region : New Aquitaine, city of Bassens, France
Entities involved :
- Bordeaux Metropolis
- Port of Bordeaux
- Municipality of Bassens
Mainly urban
It refers to a physical transformation of the built environment (hard investment)
No
Yes
Europan 16 / Winning proposal
As an individual in partnership with other persons
First name: Theodossis Last name: Montarnier--Michaeloudes Gender: Male Age: 29 Please attach a copy of your national ID/residence card:
By ticking this box, I certify that the information regarding my age is factually correct. : Yes Nationality: France Address (country of permanent residence for individuals or address of the organisation)<br/>Street and number: 122 Rue De Saint Genes Town: Bordeaux Postal code: 33000 Country: France Direct Tel:+33 6 62 02 00 38 E-mail:tm@keno.archi Website:https://keno.archi/portfolio/europan-16/
First name: Mikhalis Last name: Montarnier--Michaeloudes Gender: Male Age: 29 Please attach a copy of your national ID/residence card:
By ticking this box, I certify that the information regarding my age is factually correct. : Yes Nationality: France Address (country of permanent residence for individuals or address of the organisation)<br/>Street and number: 122 Rue De Saint Genes Town: Bordeaux Postal code: 33000 Country: France Direct Tel:+33 6 63 77 31 91 E-mail:mm@keno.archi Website:https://keno.archi/portfolio/europan-16/
First name: Paul Last name: de Cathelineau Gender: Male Age: 28 Please attach a copy of your national ID/residence card:
By ticking this box, I certify that the information regarding my age is factually correct. : Yes Nationality: France Address (country of permanent residence for individuals or address of the organisation)<br/>Street and number: 13 rue de l’abreuvoir Saint Martin Town: L’Aigle Postal code: 61300 L’Aigle Country: France Direct Tel:+33 6 43 73 07 20 E-mail:pac@keno.archi Website:https://keno.archi/portfolio/europan-16/
SITE
Bassens is the last dense city north of the Bordeaux Metropolis. Extending over more than 1000 hectares, it marks the end of the slope of the right bank of the Garonne.
The topography of the area, as well as the presence of the Bordeaux–Paris high-speed trainline (LGV: ligne grande vitesse), constitute physical boundaries that separate the town into two parts:
- A lower part, the industrial–dockland area, which stretches along the river for more than 4km.
- An upper part, a populated plateau, which develops in the middle of green spaces and natural areas.
Crossing this boundary from the populated plateau to reach the river banks is one of the main challenges for the city of Bassens.
New uses will be developed in connection with the river, in a concern of valorization and preservation.
The hybridisation of the territory, considered on the one hand as an entrance to the city and on the other hand as its limit, should more generally allow the creation of a new coherence including the industrial-port ecosystem.
THE CHALLENGES OF BASSENS
The Anthropocene’s state is critical, but not lost. Bassens, as an industrial-port area, represents a way to rebuild a society that is more sustainable, attractive and inclusive. At the nexus of biotic and abiotic infrastructures, the industrial port territory has the potential to transcend an ownership economy into an economy of usage, through bountiful land and logistic infrastructures.
To rethink an urbanized Gaia, we need to reinstate collaborative intelligence in human and natural systems.
The result is a symbiotic economy where every single element is valued for the potential it carries rather than for its immediate worth.
SYMBIOTIC BOOM! seeks resilience.
Through functional hybridization, what is already there but obsolete, can become welcoming.
With the “right to use”, citizen stake back the land use rights of anthropized soils and are united in rebuilding a collective social capital.
Resilient
Industrial Ecology
Living City
Collaborative Circular Ecosystem
Symbiotic Economy
URBAN CITY STRATEGY
The project site area, between the limestone plateau and the alluvial plain raises questions about the role of the river in creating a new territorial intelligence and new links between environments.
The challenges of programation of use and mobility must be defined, in terms of revitalization and interface, in order to enhance and connect ecosystems evolving in parallel on the site.
A work on the theme of the living city, as a composite city, should therefore make it possible to initiate the setting in spaces and temporalities of new economic, ecological and energy challenges, in a human and sensitive strategic approach.
The question we answer is how can we produce wealth differently in an economic system that seemed, until the health crisis, unalterable.
We propose to move from monofunctional production spaces to agile, dense, reversible places, able to accommodate more with less surface. This gain of space allows to preserve the agricultural soils which were preempted to accommodate the future needs of the industries and to put them back in the race of time, in connection with the city and the use of its inhabitants.
The vacant surfaces are made available by mutualizing redundant programs between companies in the Industrial-Portuary Zone that previously required logistics specific to each company. These shared spaces become meeting places.
This is a pilot test of an economy of use on a metropolitan scale.
Finally, the resources produced are not considered in terms of quantity but in terms of quality of use. This reverses the idea that a port in good economic health must necessarily produce more, transform more or grow in surface area. The economic benefits can be increased by 40% by reducing the usable area of companies by 30% and thus generate public spaces open to users, collective values/resources and a reduced environmental impact.
IDENTITY
The port and its activities are no longer the stuff of dreams. Once a symbol of long-distance travel, cargoes of exotic products and travelers from afar, the port is now associated with all the nuisances and health risks. Successive regulations have made it completely opaque and independent of the city's system. Yet present on 70% of the surface of Bassens, this port has never seemed so far away for the inhabitants of the Metropolis.
The project aims to reveal the identity of the Port, to make it acceptable and desirable from the point of view of the ordinary users, those who live alongside it every day, and not those who benefit from what is produced there. The infrastructural heritage is highlighted, underlined by occasional interventions and public events.
OPEN PORT
The Port is now open on its bangs. Belvederes are emerging to reveal the cadences of the handlers. The 100 metre long sheds are being redeveloped to accommodate last mile logistics on the ground floor and associative programs on the upper floors. The productive spaces are hybridized to welcome users.
The ongoing soil clean-up has progressively revealed the environment's potential, as it could become a vibrant mix of dynamic and edifying spaces.
As we "Show How", we place the port at the center of the citizens' lives, and it becomes an active showcase of a certain "Know How". Several transient activities will portray a different vision of the territory, experienced by men and nature, allowing us to explore the nooks and crannies of the port
MAKING THE INVISIBLE VISIBLE
At the nexus between visible and invisible, living organisms are recovering their place. In Bassens, our senses were altered by sensorial disturbances: the atmospheric pollution, the hubbub caused by the handling of containers, the fog due to port activity, the smells emanating from storages.
Restoring our senses is a form of resilience expressed through living organisms.
In economically fertile areas we frequently observe an imbalance in the distribution of the wealth generated within the territory.
The cohabitation between workers and inhabitants is tense because of the nuisances and risks caused by the industries and the port area (technological, environmental and health risks). Through this project we want to give back to the inhabitants who participate in this collective wealth by accepting a co-existence, the contribution of the effort made. We have named this collective chapter "Social Capital".
SOCIAL CAPITAL
Each space we activate holds a potential for adaptability at different times of the day and the year, so that the zones may be experienced and activated by different types of users during periods that will fit into their diverse schedules, which sometimes overlap.
We believe in such poetry which can be found in even the simplest places, such as 24/7 gas stations, places that are open all night, and constitute landmarks. They were thought as transient, movable and yet they represent solid anchors in a population’s daily habits.
REFORMING SOCIETY
Amidst a more inclusive, sustainable and attractive Bassens, there is space for a collective generosity, the gift of surplus or recovered resources. These actions in favor of free access to certain material and immaterial resources gives each inhabitant, worker or tourist, a part to play in the collective effort of this societal transformation. This form of collaborative and solidary governing reevaluates the actual value we associate with resources and places.
The open programming and the developed synergies create social capital as well as work. Solidary canteens and children playgrounds represent even more events that allow intergenerational meetings.
Behind the open door(s) there are new kinds of apprenticeships, new jobs and our collective imagination grows from it. Bassens’ identity forms a union with all the values that are "Made in Bassens".
The concept of the project is to free up a portion of the right-of-way for economic activity in order to give it back to the residents who have been deprived of it for four decades. This hostage-taking of the territory by the productivist economic model has cut the inhabitants off from their river.
The reconquest of the existing infrastructural buildings reconverted into public spaces is made possible by the non-standard dimensions of the port infrastructures (hangars, storage silos). Some production sites are hybridized in order to keep in part a productive activity turned towards the logistic quays and a social activity open to the city. These hybrid buildings use the already there in its hull and instigate a new programming to create interfaces between inhabited city and productive city.
COLLECTIVE PROPERTY MANAGED BY THE USERS
The intention is to add to the economic value already present (large employment area), a social value (meeting spaces, collective canteens, day care centers for workers' children)
The recovered surfaces are pooled in a housing estate which remains the property of the Port of Bordeaux but which is self-managed by a collective of inhabitants and associations. These spaces, which are formed as opportunities arise, become open spaces on the bangs of the industrial port zone and accessible to the greatest number of people. Thus, these new public spaces, some of which last only a few years and others are more permanent, become catalysts for events and society.
A transitional urbanism is put in place immediately, without waiting for the major works, in order to propose urban situations to the inhabitants, to test with them the validity of the hypotheses of urbanity and to adjust the installations and the reinvested buildings with their return.
A project with the residents, by the residents and for the residents.
The reappropriated buildings comply with all regulations as long as they do not increase the existing risk.
LOCAL LEVEL
The project is led by the Grand Port of Bordeaux, Bordeaux Metropole and the City of Bassens. The collaboration of these three actors for the implementation of a common project is unprecedented. It is the first time that the three stakeholders have been brought together around the table to define a territorial strategy for more than 300 hectares. These three institutional actors are accompanied by the GIP-Grand Projet des Villes Rive Droite in order to integrate themselves into the territorial strategy of the Bordeaux Right Bank.
REGIONAL LEVEL
The port terminal of Bassens on which we are activating an ecological transition project is directly linked to an extraterritorial scale, since it is connected to 6 other terminals going up to the Gironde estuary.
Each of the terminals is specific to a type of freight (containers, cereals, ore...). The goods arriving in the region leave from these entry points. It is this scale of reflection that is considered to achieve carbon neutrality.
The experimentation is conducted by combining the four helices: research, civil society, institutions and public power. The 300 hectares become an experimental territory for the remediation of polluted and artificial soils and the decontamination of the Garonne.
NATIONAL / EUROPEAN LEVEL
The companies present on the site are satellites of major international groups (Michelin, SEA Invest, Lessieur), and have expertise in research and development. The experimentation of the economy of use is also carried out through the research-action poles of these groups.
The collaboration of private and public actors allows to reach a common objective of territorial synergy. This complementarity allows the community to surround itself with academic and industrial expertise, to not carry the entire economic weight of the ecological transition alone, and to distribute respective responsibilities.
AUGMENTED ACTIVITY
The pre-existing infrastructures are generous enough to take on, beyond their primary functions, the new secure continuities as well as the user interfaces. The monumental dimensions taken from Bassens’ typology (wastelands, hangars, cargo railway…) allows us to repurpose the margins of this hugeness to introduce some social bond.
SYNERGIES
SYMBIOTIC BOOM !, in its relationship with all kinds of resources is no longer extracting but regenerating. Ecosystems are progressively restored while still producing more wealth. What was waste in one system is source material for another. Five basic principles frame these exchanges:
- Associating the intelligence of organisms and human activities;
- the short-cycle development of a diversified local production;
- a free and direct collaboration between the ecosystem’s entities;
- a diversity of players and resources preserved by the system’s activity;
- territories that can be accessed through common flows/streams;
LABORATORY OF THE LIVING
The experimental approach initiated in Bassens relies on the academic world. Le laboratory of the living, an Agro Campus satellite, is the perfect anchor for this research partnership. The complementary systems that fit the right environment are tested: the clean-up of the estey’s freshwater was done using seaweed, the estuary’s saltwater was cleaned using oysters. Seaweed can also be used as fuel or can be edible, whereas oysters are refined in canals for local consumption.
The floodable recreational forestry park, created from firewood, filters pollution and absorbs the winter floods. This multitude of functions leads to open planning in accordance with the development of resiliency programs.
REVERSE
The cleaning up of Artificial soil, where productive and logistical usage is over, is a necessity. These surfaces or the reversal of fertile soil places them back in dynamic spaces that can host educational but also productive activities.
FROM AN ECONOMY BASED ON OWNERSHIP TO AN ECONOMY BASED ON USAGE
SYMBIOTIC BOOM ! chooses an economy based on usage rather than one based on ownership. We do not need to own what we use; we only need to use it. Now that the “right to use” will be allotted to associations and collectives in the near future, the switch to a different economic model confirms people want to share resources in a fairer way. This paradigm shift has truly been willed by the citizens who wish to have a more responsible consumption in order to limit our environmental impact.
This proned model does not impede economic profit yet still guarantees a better social capital which is based on collaboration. To those who want to “produce more to earn more” we answer, “produce better, to share”. A quantitative model cannot last since it is based on the planned obsolescence of its own resources.
What if instead of considering how much is produced, we prioritized a model where the finality isn’t the product, but its usage? Thus, we are no longer selling the product, but rather its sustainability. This switch in economic efficiency inevitably entails environmental efficiency. A good example for this is the Michelin company who are funding research and development for a sustainable tire (made from seaweed). They are no longer selling a tire, but rather the guarantee of a certain number of kilometers for transporters.
SYMBIOTIC BOOM! is a way to pool companies’ means so as to create a more efficient economic tool as well as an exchange interface for complementary activity sectors. Driven by mutual cooperative and collaborative values, hybrid programs may emerge, combining social, economic and environmental functions.
DO NOW!
The symbiotic city does not wait for renewal through big constructions, it is able to “make do” with that which is “already there”. Citizens and institutions may host transient interventions, territorial players are linked throughout the city in circular fashion.
SYMBIOTIC BOOM ! is above all a methodology, a beta action protocol intended to be replicated in all territories sharing the same constraints:
Industrial-port area at a break with the metropolis initiating their ecological transition
The T1/T2/T3 temporal methodology is a strategy of progressive action allowing to create a flexible framework for the development project.
The symbiotic city does not wait for renewal through big constructions, it is able to “make do” with that which is “already there”. Citizens and institutions may host transient interventions, territorial players are linked throughout the city in circular fashion, enabling the exchange of skills and resources. This strengthens social capital.
T1: HERALDING
SYMBIOTIC BOOM! draws its strength from its environment. Its starting point will be understanding its territory, so as to “make do”, while considering the importance of the existing buildings and natural spaces, because these will be the spaces on which something new can emerge.
It often seems that large surfaces of land, outside of operating zones, are stuck in time and space and reserved by industries for future expansion. Port Authorities, citizen collectives and industries will renegotiate this capitalistic take on land through a “right to use” / “right to pass through”.
T2 : ANCHORING
SYMBIOTIC BOOM! offers increased activity for the port. Optimization solutions are proposed for the stocking zones of container loads, to make more land available. These free spaces allow more interaction between users.
T3 : AMPLIFYING
The economy switch that began in Bassens is now being exported to other port industry poles and is amplified through the already existing networks. Mutual helping and the sharing of knowledge, the transformation of waste into resources in Bassens, is all merging to become an extraterritorial collective intelligence.
These three stages allow the transition from an economy of ownership to an economy of use.
GLOBAL CONTEXT
-In France, between 20,000 and 30,000 hectares are artificially developed each year. This artificialization is increasing nearly 4 times faster than the population and has direct repercussions on the quality of life.
-300,000 sites have soils that are potentially polluted by agents dangerous to human health.
-80% of the volume of trade on a global scale is carried out by sea, which represents by sea.
GLOBAL CHALLENGE
Metropolises continue their quest for growth, now investing in constrained land. Industrial port areas, the gateway to the metropolises, are now under pressure to reduce carbon emissions, but with a growing desire to increase economic revenues and expand the useful surface of industries.
This model is now obsolete. Following the health crisis, voices have been raised to defend the environments that welcome us and to make habitable the anthropized spaces that have been deviated by human activity (polluted soils, inaccessible portions of territory due to industries, pollution of waterways).
We propose a resilient model using the qualities present in order to couple productive city and living city for a new synergy between inhabitants and workers.
While guaranteeing a profitable economic model, we propose a system of land use planning capable of reintegrating all the waste of certain companies into a circular loop as resources for others. This loop finds its viability in the ecosystem of an industrial-portal zone hosting about fifty complementary industries on a close territory.
This experimentation on a local scale, collaborative, supportive and open (on its bangs) to the city, marks a turning point in the organization and logistics of these autonomous spaces. We are thus proposing a collaborative archipelago which has a vocation to resonate on a European scale, through the network of port metropolises linked by waterways.
These entry points can become the new markers of a successful global ecological transition.
