The aim of the project was to revitalize Lausanne’s biggest square through the demolition of huge unused buildings and the construction of 900 apartments and infrastructure. The chronic lack of lodgings and the difficulty of transportation due to the city’s complex geography led us to design not 900, but 10,000 apartments in a utopian megastructure, which, like a virus, invades the entire city. We have deepened the theme of metabolic megastructures and we have made it our own, without forgetting the domestic scale. The deliberately exaggerated search for the machine-house has allowed us to develop aspects of design that would otherwise have remained unexplored.

status: academic project
for: usi Mendrisio
atelier: L-Architectes
what: new metabolic city
where: Lausanne, Switzerland
when: winter 2016
who: S. Cattaneo & F. Borea
this project received compliments from Jona Friedman.