3 Questions to Anouk Legendre, Architect & Co-Founder, XTU Architects
TF - What issues does Hamo+ address?
The evolution of land use in the territories of French metropolises shows a strong artificialization dynamic with a 30% increase in urbanized surfaces since 1983.
Approximately 2,500 wastelands, representing more than 130,000 hectares of land, have been identified in France. Often located in urban areas, the reinvestment of these spaces is a challenge supported by the government, particularly through legislative changes.
Brownfields are areas that have been abandoned for more than a year following the cessation of their activity. They can be detrimental to the urban landscape, have a negative effect on the value of the surrounding land, or present a safety risk: collapse of buildings, pollution, squats, etc. But wastelands can also be useful when they are permeable, providing a space for vegetation and climate regulation in the heart of the urbanized area. They can also have a societal role as a place of sociability or artistic creativity.
But these transitory functions of wastelands do not constitute sustainable models. These occupations only provide time to prepare a project and to avoid the dilapidation of buildings.
Reconverting brownfields has many advantages, including that of recovering available land space by combating urban sprawl without encroaching on natural and agricultural areas.
Simultaneously, there is a global awareness of the instability of energy distribution in the world. Countries are seeking to achieve their energy independence while controlling their CO2 emissions by committing to the energy transition and thus integrating renewable energy into their strategy.
The sun is a clean, silent and inexhaustible energy that can be captured by photovoltaic panels that convert it into electricity. It is now the fastest growing energy production system in the world, thanks to its ease of installation, its safety and its efficiency.
TF - How does Hamo+ concretely address these issues?
Hamo+ regenerates wastelands by using energy as a "global energy catalyst": it does not only provide electrical energy, but a "new energy", which is also social, ecological and economic energy. It also integrates the "energy of water" which allows nature, biodiversity and vegetable gardens to develop!
Hamo+ aims at energy autonomy through direct self-consumption in a short circuit. The inhabitants do not pay for their energy. Self-consumption avoids costs related to the transport of energy.
Hamo + is solidarity-based: as a district producer of a large quantity of solar energy, it redistributes the energy that has not been consumed to the district. It thus fights against energy insecurity.
Hamo + gives its place back to Nature:
Returning to nature, living in a green universe, experiencing the seasons, is the essence of this project. The new urbanites want to find this dimension that has been lost in the heart of the city. This is why wastelands are so interesting, because they are often revisited by nature. And Hamo+ integrates this existing vegetation as a founding element thanks to a tool for analyzing the vegetation presence. The district is organized around this vegetal heritage and develops it.
Water is the basis of this re-naturalization: rainwater will be infiltrated, but grey water will also be filtered on site by phyto-remediation, which will then be redistributed in the gardens and vegetated spaces. Thus, plant life will be able to develop from this water resource.
And this approach to water and nature will be demonstrative and perfectly visible. The filtering ditches, the willow, rush and iris gardens, will form the landscape of Hamo+.
Hamo+ demineralizes the wasteland to refresh its climate:
A vegetal environment is developed around water to refresh the local ecosystem, and the soil is demineralized to reduce the heat island. The roads are pedestrian, and reduced to the essential, the soil is permeable, the paths are planted, the shade is thought through.
Hamo+ is a turnkey district with controlled costs:
Hamo+ revalorizes wastelands thanks to coherent energetic and architectural turnkey programming of a group of houses or dwellings equipped with clean energy.
Positive energy is also the social energy that will keep the inhabitants in this territory.
To do this, the projects will integrate all the services necessary for the life of the inhabitants with the objective of sharing and of short cycles for an autonomous living space. It integrates a coworking space, a shop/café/neighborhood concierge, a mobility offer, common premises...
In the wastelands with existing buildings, Hamo + develops an original concept of housing-workshops which consists in reusing existing halls in order to create a community of craftsmen.
Hamo+ proposes a collection of architectures, adaptable to the architectural and cultural particularities of the place, but nevertheless industrialized off-site. The structures and all the basic elements are similar, only the facades and volumes vary from the same modular system. This optimizes the costs which are thus pre-studied for a turnkey district at controlled cost.
The materials sought are natural or bio-sourced (wood, raw earth...), reusable, or reused in a spirit of sobriety, local-sourcing and preservation of global resources.
Hamo+: a digital toolbox to exchange with communities:
The offer takes the form of a "toolbox", proposing all the services with a strong environmental dimension that participate in the desired autonomy: energy, biodiversity, water cycle, construction materials, including programmatic elements, the desired density, the typologies of public spaces, the collection of architectures...
The purpose of Hamo+ is to propose developments consistent with the territories concerned, which tend to improve the overall environmental impact of housing in urban areas.
The transformed wasteland becomes the place of a new life and a new energy.
TF - What would be the ideal deployment scenario for Hamo+?
The deployment strategy of the project is articulated in different stages.
Hamo+ is developing a global methodology for the definition of relevant programs according to the current development of each brownfield. This first study will lead to the creation of an evolving toolbox, presenting this methodology as well as a pre-study on the redevelopment of a typical brownfield.
This first step will bring concrete elements to engage the owners of a wasteland to rehabilitate. It will then be essential to prospect for places favorable to the implementation of such a strategy in order to produce a first project that will validate Hamo's positioning and allow the dissemination of the project on a larger scale.
Those 3 questions were written following the Transition Forum Call for Expressions of Interest. Hamo+ is part of the top 20 selected projects.
