The Office for Metropolitan Architecture OMA has released ‘PXP: the shared city’, a proposal to create an urban space dedicated for sharing and innovation, as part of the Réinventer Paris plan that aims to develop innovative urban projects within the French capital.
Founded in 1975, OMA is a leading international partnership practicing architecture, urbanism, and cultural analysis with offices in Rotterdam, New York, Beijing and Hong Kong. Its buildings and master plans around the world insist on intelligent forms while inventing new possibilities for content and everyday use.
OMA’s scheme would function as a mixed-use structure combining trading, leisure and catering activities, while integrating existing bus stations in Paris, designboom.com reported.
Sited within the business district of la défense, the building will bring together four traditional types of courtyards to create a multiplicity of floor plans. The transparent facade allows a reading of the programmatic diversity, and its inflections unveil alternately more intimate spaces and generous openings to the city. The internal courtyards form public squares, the scale of which echoes the Parisian urban fabric.
Landscape will constantly weave through the scheme to emphasize biodiversity. The three main features: planted courtyards, green facades and urban agriculture will be used to encourage local residents to have shared green space. The roof of the building, entirely dedicated to urban agriculture renewable energy, places the building and its users in a system of shared economy and responsible proximity. The productivity of the 5,800 square meters of urban farming is estimated at eight tons per year of fruits, vegetables, herbs and edible flowers.
The project will facilitate the development of sharing economies and accommodates changing lifestyles. Throughout the building there will be shared spaces to bring a diversity of functions from working, entertaining and exchanging.
The core of PXP consists of spaces designed to host offices, housing, hotel, retail and parking. Revolving around them is the series of shared spaces, which takes up a fifth of the site. The sharing concept is applied in each component, from the gardens to the parking spaces, as well as the offices and shops.
“PXP acts as a bridge, both metaphorically and functionally. It is based on a bold structural principle: a suspension of urban space which supports the infrastructure that crosses it. With the multitude of networking and exchange opportunities PXP enables, it offers a new site for the public and private spheres to meet and a new type of uses to emerge. The permeability of the programs will allow users to interact around shared facilities,” the company said.
