France's premier port, its gateway to the maritime world in Europe, is leaving its historic setting to capture the estuary, and is offering the town the opportunity for a new development. This is not a recapture alone, but a reincarnation: industrial ground becomes urban ground, the natural environment associated with the river – the Seine – is restored to its place at the heart of the town.  Here, the public space is a fragment of a larger geographical area, in which each element is designed to echo the vocabulary of a harbour context. In each element, the horizons and the thickness of the built ground in the river, are designed to "inhabit the port".

The project will be implemented in several stages: the first phase concentrates on the southern part around the "Saint-Nicolas" dockers district, the second on the northern part near the railway station.
The southern part is a park 1700m long.  A significant share of the cost will be borne by the "Pic Urban” EU support program. 500 new "waterfront" dwellings will help restore the existing urban fabric, with the building process paying for part of the public spaces.
The objective for the northern part is to restore the existing areas around the docks, which will be converted into a huge shopping and leisure complex, with the addition of two large building designed by Jean Nouvel (a tower forming a "seaworld and sustainable development centre", and a swimming-pool). Part of the cost of this will be borne by the public purse, the rest by the investors (ING).
Principles of the project:
The whole project is governed by a single objective: we wanted to retain the extraordinary potential and identity of the harbour environment, whilst introducing new uses and features.
First: levelling the ground. The ground along the piers is almost perfectly flat, the straight outline of the piers echoing the horizontal surface of the immense harbour-basin. The scale here is kilometric, and the aim is to emphasise both the dimensions and the horizontality. The levelling principles applied to the mineral surface stretches the rectilinear areas and edges, some of them several hundreds metres long. On the same principle, the fence between the park and the dry docks is a stainless steel mesh 360m long, divided into 40m stretches, which in the evening sun resembles the mirrored surface of one of the basins.
Second: identify the range of local materials, translate old materials into new ground, recycle old materials. In order to stretch the straight edges of the individual pavements and to pick up the theme of the scarified ground by the rails, we use cast iron edges (around 11km will be used in the project). As far as possible, the original sandstone pavements are retained, the rest being recycled to make new pavements. The colour range creates a unity between the colour of the existing granite slabs of the old piers, the texture of the new bituminous roadways, the texture of the concrete used for cycling and walking paths, the colour of the new surfaces made of lined sandstone (like parquet flooring made of stone).
Third: establish a new status for the vegetation and a renewed role for natural elements. Previously, all the vegetation was outside the harbour area. In the northern part, near the docks, the park is largely mineral in texture. The project thus incorporates large meadows in the southern part along the river basin. Throughout, the boundary between rock and vegetation remains ambiguous, with no sharp edges: grass infiltrates into stone, stone into grass. There are occasional plantations of trees in order to include tall features in the landscape, echoing the skyline of the nearby gantries. Nature is also present in the skyscape. The effect of marine light is increased and magnified by the rectilinear edges of the floor slabs, and the distinctive concrete sand texture of the pavement is reflected in the sandstone...
Work on the southern part began in September 2005, and finishes in October 2006.  The northern phase starts in June 2006 and will be completed in 2007.

Commissioned by: Ville du Havre
Program: public open space, 5 buildings
Area: 74 acres
Study phase: 2004-2005
Construction: 2005-2007
Design and construction: Obras architectes
Jérôme Mazas, Agence Horizons – Landscape:
Louis Clair, Light Cibles - Light engineer
BETURE Infrastructure - consulting structural engineer

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