Recently honored in the first edition of the ‘OFF du dévelopment durable’ as ‘sustainable and desirable area’ and awarded in the recent ‘Barème carbone’ Prize, Tekhnê Architects‘ proposal for the Urban Development project of Beausejour ZAC in La Réunion aims to meet a tremendous challenge. It consists in taking an outstanding 80 ha site of sugar cane fields and then conceiving and creating a town that will be loved by its population and will go through time without hindrance, by integrating it into the environmental setting of the 21st century. More images and architects’ description after the break.
(Re-)Discovering the pleasure of living “in town”, on an island, in a period when people prefer to live individually and apart, is not as simple as it may seem. To meet this challenge, the holistic proposal developed on the basis of the site’s potentials provides the 20,000 people of this “half-slopes” area with an attractive, identifiable town centre area and neighborhoods with unique atmospheres to ensure that they are lived in by a varied range of people, which is the foundation of balanced community harmony. In this case, the land ceases to be a simple asset to be developed, and it becomes a resource for a new intense, economical and balanced human settlement, playing its part in the island’s demographic expansion.
