Montpellier 2040

The Southern Hemisphere is an incredibly fertile and thought-provoking part of the world in terms of exploration and programming. The Mediterranean region and the Southern Hemisphere have a huge amount to teach us about how to build the city of tomorrow, so much in fact that Franck Boutté has coined the concept of “bioclimatic architecture inspired by the South”, based on the “code of the shade”, a method underpinned by geometry and topology, air flow, fractal design, and the adjustment of laws to different scales, from the smallest material to the region at large. But experimentation with bioclimatic architecture inspired by the South is gaining widespread acceptance in our time of climate change. In the Northern Hemisphere, we can expect to inherit Southern Hemisphere conditions, an inevitability we need to keep front of mind.

The prospective exploration work carried out with the AUC on the Montpellier urban area (“Montpellier 2040” competition) was started back in 2012 in this spirit of focusing our attention to the South, with the idea of learning from that part of the world. The team is now researching ecological structures in this region with a view to climate resilience.

Working with AUC, the lead urban planners, the team drew on geography, climatology, existing green and blue corridors, and the urban development underway to create ecological corridors and target areas for acceptable densification. Montpellier 2040 is a pivotal project for Atelier Frank Boutté.

“Global warming wasn’t yet a major concern. With the AUC, who understood the value we brought to the table regarding the climate question, we recommended mapping climate and local situations based on wind direction, topographical variations, and land-use intensity. Without complex digital simulations or in-situ measurements. The result was a series of maps at different scales and climate cross-sections enabling us to characterize a sort of ‘encyclopedia of Montpellier’s climates’ in 2040.” – Mohamed Benzerzour.