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Thesis

French

ID: <

http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11794/22504

>

Where these data come from
The motorway brownfield: a morphological and sensitive reading of an intermediate landscape

Abstract

Table of Honour of the Faculty of Higher and Post-Doctoral Studies, 2011-2012 This research focuses on spatial and landscape changes brought about by the construction of motorway systems. It focuses more specifically on the study of abandoned areas which gradually emerge as a result of building them, brownfield sites which form the interface of the motorway network, intermediate landscapes which are surrounded on a daily basis, but which are likely to be evacuated from representations granted to infrastructure, from technical environments which need to be explored in all their complexity in order to initiate their understanding and reflection on their future. In this sense, the study attempts to formulate the design of motorway brownfield sites as an intermediate urban landscape, to shift the prima facie technical image of these abandoned to the one that would be more sensitive. It thus seeks to highlight the technical logic underlying their emergence and to observe their morphological qualities associated with the geometry of motorway components (route, nodes, access points) and their relationship with neighbouring urban tissues. It also looks at dynamics; both natural, human and sensory, which define the unbearable character of these landscapes. From a methodological point of view, this research puts forward a process of reading motorway brownfield sites based on typo-morphological and sensitive approaches. On the one hand, the typo-morphological approach is used to examine their formal structures, in relation to brownfields which are organised in continuity with the motorway network of the urban agglomeration of Québec and more specifically in the mesh and at the boundary of the components of the Félix-Leclerc motorway. On the other hand, by reading the brownfield sites of the Félix-Leclerc/Henri-IV exchange in situ, the sensitive approach seeks to reveal the stratification of the dynamics that define these exceptional landscapes. That research emphasises that the motorway network is driving the emergence of brownfield sites, whether they are directly linked to the configuration of its components or to their interaction with the fabrics surrounding them, thus organising themselves internally or externally to the infrastructure. Contextually, motorway brownfields tend to develop at the general level of the motorway system, but more particularly in peri-urban areas, where the network components are built up widely throughout the territory. Thus, these gaps include a formal structure which is linked to the specific configuration of motorway components, but also to the multiple relationships between the infrastructure and its adjacent fabric. Similarly, it is concrete shapes which tend to be distorted in relation to those resulting from the theoretical design logic, which are also impressive at motorway and territorial level. In relation to their landscape, motorway brownfield sites are defined according to a basic landscape structure linked to the previous use of the land and the construction of the infrastructure. A structure which is at the origin of the subsequent takeovers of nature and the formation of wetlands, thus organising particularly diverse environments. It is also noted that these forgotten environments are convened by citizens. Loopholes speak out on their boundaries and make brownfield sites accessible, while their surfaces are shaped by human interventions such as informal pathways and places. The intensification of our perceptions is also attributable to the practice of these complex landscapes, as well as those linked to the pathway process and those linked to the sensitive qualities of the environment. Motorway brownfield sites are therefore not strictly technical areas of the motorway, but sensitive environments and landscapes at urban level. Depending on their physical, landscape and sensory qualities, but also according to all their potential, they now present themselves as environments to be reinvented, driven by new developments or new forms of occupation. An intermediate landscape of interest that deserves to be involved in urban life, in our daily practices. A new form of urbanity that is emerging, currently awaiting the decisions and concepts that will drive it.

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