Unlocking Residual Spaces and Creating In-between

Abstract

The project deals with a changing territorial environment on the Île aux Épis in Strasbourg, France, on which an urban (residential) masterplan has been drawn with a set of stipulations by the port authorities on the island. These stipulations introduce, among other things, a road that is to maintain the connectivity of the port to the highway infrastructure of France and Europe while avoiding the newly-introduced functions of the masterplan as much as possible. Consequently, the road as drawn in the masterplan negates much of its surroundings and thus, if left untouched, may generate conditions of residual spaces reminiscent to Ignasi de Solà-Morales' "Terrain Vague." The project, a bus transfer station, which is to facilitate the flux of tourists and passengers that arrive in or traverse through the city of Strasbourg, thus attempts to use the qualities of such residuals by creating new spaces in-between different sets of urban, infrastructural and natural conditions on the project site.