Building intermediate spaces in the composite city: Achères in the Grand Paris

The studies led by the various teams for the Greater Paris since 2008, did reveal the extraordinary morphological, social, economical, administrative and political complexity of the Ile-­‐de-­‐France’s Region. Each team, consisting of a consultancy of architects-­‐ town planners and of academic experts (there are today 17 which worked for the Greater Paris), did underline a different aspect. Some did underline the lack of public transportation between the towns, highlighting, by doing so, the imbalances between the towns and the social segregation. Some other did underline the lack and the inadequacy of the housings offers (the deficit keeps decreasing year by year). Some other notice the “ugliness” of an agglomeration which didn’t manage well its development since the 60’s. They call to make the city a “delighting” place again, by developing and embellishing it. The reason for the Greater Paris’ chaotic morphology lies in the several changes of doctrines and orientations of the urbanization policies, which appeared to be unable to face the fluctuant situations. After the amazing development of the agglomeration, during the years which followed the second world war (« The Thirty Glorious »), followed economical crisis, unemployment and deindustrialization. The « french model of integration and social ascent » doesn’t work anymore and fails to attract an important part of the immigrant population. At the ACS laboratory (our team being gathered around the MVRDV in Rotterdam, and associated with AAF), we worked on the field of the territoriality’s habitability, of which we want to report in this communication, based on a theoretical position which kept strengthening itself : the concept of city has become ineffective. It is pointless to look for a pre-­‐ established logic of the city. Opposite, we shall postulate the Urban’s hybridity, which is made of thousands of fragments, each one having its logics, temporalities, its economy, its policies. We consider the so-­‐called hybridity of the contemporary space as the very nature of these inhabited spaces, and not as something unnatural, or negative. We applied this reflection for a sharp observation at the local scale of a town at the junction of the rivers Seine and Oise.