Ile de Nantes

On Ile de Nantes, first in the studio’s role as assistant project manager for urban development agency Samoa, then as a member of the urban project management team partnered with uapS (a local architecture and urban design studio), Atelier Frank Boutté was involved in two multi-scale projects, working on the transformation plan (urban form and public space), and the respective specifications for each lot.

The first project addressed the full coherence between the sustainability roadmap established for the eastern side of the island and, on the one hand, the “legacy directives”—everything preceding the developer’s intervention, from international obligations to local policies and planning documents—and, on the other hand, all the interventions undertaken in the area. The collection and collation of information was a huge task. According to the local actors, this mapping exercise was unprecedented, but it allowed them to identify complementarities and synergies while simultaneously removing any areas of conflict.

The second project related to the equalization tool. The island is divided into three distinct areas: the political districts in the northeast benefitting from ANRU (National Agency for Urban Regeneration) initiatives; the much-spotlighted new development area in the southwest benefitting from Samoa’s expertise; and the city quarter, (“Faubourg”) in the center which was not benefitting from any such initiatives. And this is the point where you arrive on to the island and see it for the first time. With this in mind, we recommended that Samoa set up a “Sustainability Exchange” to free up resources for intervention on the Faubourg district. This would be done through a financial contribution based on effort avoided, giving developers some flexibility in Samoa’s area. This amounted to regarding energy renovation as a positive externality for future operations.

The calculations carried out on Ile de Nantes showed that energy and carbon savings were five times higher for existing buildings than for new ones, i.e. one euro transferred from new to existing buildings generated a fivefold saving on energy and carbon.

This was a Eureka moment for us. From that moment on, we decided to systematically consider and integrate the factors of synergy, leverage effects, and positive externalities into all our projects. Yet another way of challenging what we thought we knew and thinking outside the box.