The Marsiho project is part of EuroMed 1, former docklands converted into a coastal façade. 

If the volumetric blueprint by town-planner Yves Lion was based on tall, linear buildings, this project, across from the port and very visible from the motorway between the Zaha Hadid and Jean Nouvel buildings, offers volumetric and elevated fragmentation. 

It presents three offset towers with different architectures so as to create more familiar scales that are better incorporated into the Marseille landscape. 

The project is part of the Cité de la Méditerranée ZAC, which aims to develop the coastal façade of Euroméditerranée and the Arenc district. It is built on a new parcel of land in the form of three vertical entities, two marking the street corners, the third set back to create a forecourt serving two access porches to the housing lobbies, and allowing transparency between the main street and the landscaped walkway at the rear of the parcel. The variation in height of the different blocks allows for the management of urban scale transitions with the neighboring blocks. The smallest block at the corner of Peyssonnel Street is 14 stories high (R+13) while the two other blocks reach 19 stories. These three entities are linked by inhabited faults treated in hollows and painted in dark colors, which develop like hyphens between the three blocks, overhanging the porches.

The new mix of the neighborhood takes shape, on the scale of the block thanks to the cohabitation between the office and housing programs, and on the scale of the project thanks to a volume shared between social housing and private housing. The social housing units benefit from the same architectural quality as those intended for free access, being located on the first levels of plot A. Three distribution shafts serve the dwellings of the operation and consist of an external staircase and one or two elevators depending on the number of dwellings to be served. The A and C cores are symmetrically composed and offer pleasant floor circulations naturally lit, and giving a view of the landscaped space of the alley. The quincunxes between the blocks allow for a maximum number of apartments with double or triple orientations, and through apartments in block B and the faults. The apartments benefit from large outdoor spaces that take different forms depending on the block in which they are installed.

In order to underline the verticality of the project and to give a certain architectural diversity, the three blocks are treated in a differentiated manner. In the manner of a triptych, the three blocks interact with each other but each offers a singular richness. Inspired by the "Cabanons marseillais", the balconies are envisaged as a real additional living room, intimate and open. Like self-constructed buildings, the balconies of plot A are dressed in different materials, as if to reflect the richness and difference of each family. More or less open on four sides, and open to the sky, these balconies offer shelter from the mistral while providing framed views of the city and the sea. This plot, located at one end of the plot, sees its volumetry aggregated with a multitude of balconies whose width varies and whose depth reaches 2.5 meters. Consisting of concrete frames constituting exoskeletons, these spaces are treated as real outdoor rooms. They are dressed with panels of a height of 2.5 meters treated by materials recalling the multiplicity of materials of the "cabanons": while some are constituted of perforated aluminum sheets, others are constituted of a succession of thermolacquered aluminum tubes, according to a pattern assimilating it to a wooden lath.

In order to accentuate the singularity of the central volume and to propose a real variation of writing, the facade of the plot B is dressed in the South with a mantilla of concrete finished with beige mineral paint, which comes to constitute a foreground protecting large balconies. The mantilla, constituted by the noses of the slabs and the posts, forms a square base pattern, with one square out of two being cut into its height. Finally, the facade of plot C is the smoothest and is treated in white cast-in-place concrete. The external spaces are treated in the form of loggias painted in a dark color. This amplifies the rhythm of the openings, giving the façade a lace- like appearance, the opposite of the image usually associated with concrete.

Team:
Architect: Brenac & Gonzalez & Associés
Client/contracting authority : Vinci Immobilier
Execution of the project: R2M
Structural engineering office: SECMO
Technical office for fluids: Garci ingénierie
HQE: OASIIS
Photos: BGA © Sergio Grazia
Text: © BGA

Team BGA architects
Founder and associate: Xavier Gonzalez, Olivier Brenac
Associate: Jean-Pierre Lévêque, Emmanuel Pierson, Guillaume Maréchaux
Project Manager: Pierre Martin Saint Etienne, Arnaud LADAUGE