Ayers, Andrew
FRAC Nord-Pas de Calais, Dunkirk, France, Lacaton & Vassal - 6 January 2014 - London EMAP Publishing Limited 2014
On the British side of the Channel, Dunkirk is indelibly associated with Operation Dynamo, the 1940 evacuation of 340,000 Allied troops with the assistance of a now legendary civilian flotilla. But in France the town was long synonymous with shipbuilding, after the founding there in 1898 of the Ateliers et Chantiers de France (ACF), which for almost a century built first liners and warships, then oil tankers and car ferries, until their closure in 1988.
In an all-too-familiar story, the municipality suddenly found itself saddled with over 150 hectares of docks and industrial wasteland, which have undergone redevelopment in two stages: the first, carried out in the 1990s, followed a masterplan drawn up by Richard Rogers; the second, which is currently being realised, follows a plan elaborated by French architect and urbanist Nicolas Michelin, whose distinctive Gâbles housing scheme (2010) now marks the skyline.
ARCHITECTURE GENERAL (AR-GEN)
FRAC Nord-Pas de Calais, Dunkirk, France, Lacaton & Vassal - 6 January 2014 - London EMAP Publishing Limited 2014
On the British side of the Channel, Dunkirk is indelibly associated with Operation Dynamo, the 1940 evacuation of 340,000 Allied troops with the assistance of a now legendary civilian flotilla. But in France the town was long synonymous with shipbuilding, after the founding there in 1898 of the Ateliers et Chantiers de France (ACF), which for almost a century built first liners and warships, then oil tankers and car ferries, until their closure in 1988.
In an all-too-familiar story, the municipality suddenly found itself saddled with over 150 hectares of docks and industrial wasteland, which have undergone redevelopment in two stages: the first, carried out in the 1990s, followed a masterplan drawn up by Richard Rogers; the second, which is currently being realised, follows a plan elaborated by French architect and urbanist Nicolas Michelin, whose distinctive Gâbles housing scheme (2010) now marks the skyline.
ARCHITECTURE GENERAL (AR-GEN)