A project by AWP and HHF

The site of the observatory is an exceptional one, for its location along the Seine river and for its “in-between”, dual nature (land/water, city/sprawl, wilderness/domesticated nature). The presence of barges, fishing huts and houseboats, which have been so far inhabiting the site has been a powerful source of inspiration.

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By working along residential neighbourhoods and along the river, we are invited by this project to come inhabit a large urban room worthy of Paris’ tradition of great terraced boulevards. This very active strip of land is made up of continuous docks, a large mooring space for barges, pontoons, lookouts, observatories, cantilevered terraces.

The design springs from a process of hybridisation between these two existing habitat models: the floating barge and the archetypical, suburban house resulting in a new typology emerging in the park and dealing with the site’s memory and identity both spatially and socially, whilst providing a contemporary and forward-looking response.