PAILLON FORUM
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Transdisciplinary Encounters - 2022
TU Delft
Supervisors: Angeliki Sioli & Aleksandar Stanicic
The Paillon river, a Mediterranean river that fluctuates between summer tranquility and the cataclysmic floods of winter, meets the sea in the city of Nice. Long open to the air, it would be covered in the 1970s and entombed by concrete tunnels. This project imagines a near future where the Paillon runs dry and the harsh sun of the south forces cultural events underground. Proposed is a square pavilion, surrounded by a park on the old footprint of the river, offering access to the tunnels directly below. The walkways of the path follow the changing city grid around it, creating new intersections and triangular blocks for the programme. At the heart of the park, the square pavilion presents itself as an abstract metallic block, expressing the forms of the tunnels below through a play in light and transparency in the multi-layered facade.
Inside, a grand staircase leads the visitor into the underground.
The tunnels are imagined as spaces for informal culture and events alongside official exhibitions from the nearby modern art museum. Openings are cut in the walls, and walkways are suspended centimetres above the last remains of the river. When and if the rain returns, the art pieces are left to wash away, leaving open spaces for festivities to return the following summer.
Although famous from its history of being used as a Lavanderie- where women would wash clothes, the river that divided this Mediterranean city is almost invisible in the city centre, present only in name. The larger walkway of the path uses one of many documented forms of the typically dry river bed to freeze its history in place, a snapshot of the past from the archives. On top, the grid of the more modern planned city, which orients itself around the bend of the river, is juxtaposed.
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