Famous for its cutlery craftsmanship, the City of Thiers benefits from an important industrial heritage, especially along the Durolle river. Due to the closure of many businesses, many buildings are now vacant. And the construction of many social housing has not boosted the redevelopment of the city as desired, which finds itself deserted in certain neighborhoods.

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Asked by the town hall of Thiers, the students of the Archistructure course bringing together the students of ENSA and Polytech de Clermont-Ferrand, and worked on a reflection project intended to help the town to design the "Thiers 2025". The challenge : identify sites of interest in order to integrate a program including rehabilitations and proposals for new structures integrated into the heart of the city. The City being nestled on a mountain, it was also necessary to integrate all the means of connection and circulation.

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First prize: l'ARBRE (The Tree)

Réda Banana, Sterenn Hamon, Pierre Renard, Louis Théron, Ulysse Darondeau and Mathieu Jarry

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This project located in the former hospital of the city of Thiers is an agricultural research center with a great mix of programs to allow the population of Thiers to reconnect with the love of their city and the terroir of its surrounding countryside. Thiers hospital has been abandoned for almost 40 years. Several of these floors have collapsed and infested with dry rot. The removal of the two highest floors and the old wooden frame is necessary. The project exploits this opportunity with the creation of posts - trees - that rises from the old vaults of the lower floors to the canopy of the greenhouse on the top floor, while bringing light into the central circulations.

The use of steel is a constraint of the project which becomes an asset in the reduced size of the sections, in the integration of the project in the old and industrial city. The intervention is marked but does not alter the mass of the hospital, whose volume is important in the landscape: the project is located at the top of a steep hill, and defines the limit of the old town. One of the special features of the hospital is the 19th century chapel which fits directly into the  volume. This is preserved and communicates in the project with a large central space on 3 levels which echoes the religious choir. All the steel sections were calculated, and the project was born from the direct cooperation between architectural and technical interactions starting at the design stage.

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https://www.construiracier.fr/concours-ensa-clermont-ferrand-le-palmares/