The Boulevards des Maréchaux are generally considered to be a homogeneous entity or "historic space", like the Grands Boulevards and the major axes created by Haussmann. But the reality is different, even if a continuity of use has been established – in fact mainly for Paris motorists.
The urban regeneration brought about by the building of the tramway makes possible a complete reworking of the deteriorated urban landscape of the Boulevards des Maréchaux to restore their status as boulevards in the sense of a public space that is actually shared by all users.
To do so, we designed a project that seeks to reconcile effectiveness of the means of transport and an excellent transverse porosity of the urban landscape, so as to forge strong links between the two sides of the project.
Our task was seen above all as attenuating the frontier effect created by the existing "road" physiognomy and changing it from that of an annex to the Paris ring road to a perception more akin to that of a green belt.
By extension, our reflection also involved the relation between Paris and the adjacent townships. To do that, we worked on the concepts of safety, legibility, and enhancement of soft links.
The result was a project design taking into account the true thickness of the Boulevards while underlining the particularities of each of the Paris "gates".
Crossing the Paris ring road appears to us as a central purpose of the urban design. At the level of each of the main city "gates", it is what will give sense to the notion of major sites that is sketched out by the tramway project.
After that, the principles of an "induced" urban design can be introduced, using the dynamic of such a transformation and such a project to generate other urban projects.
In summary, an unbroken quality of uses stemming from the strengthening of the identity of the sequences travelled, complemented by interventions at major points to facilitate "crossing the Paris ring road" seem to us to be the appropriate attitude to the issues surrounding this project.
But it’s above all on the ring of Boulevards that the conceptual and financial effort must be brought to bear in order to make it the major locus for exchanges that it is expected to be and that can then be capable of vitalising a wide range of development between Paris and the adjacent townships.