Footcheball

The Footcheball is commissioned by the Voyage à Nantes for its 2014’s edition to invent “Playgrounds” (Patricia Buck & Rafaël Magrou’s 2012 original idea).

“Playgrounds” is an invitation to play sports of a new kind and have fun, but also a proposition to the inhabitants and travelers to look at the city in a new way, like a superposition of surprises and free spaces. Mixing squash, ‘baby-foot’, and indoor soccer, the Footcheball is a sport to be played in a defined space, the Chaum-Room. It is open to everyone, as long as the sport spirit is respected.

The project is located on Nantes’ Island, near the Quartier de la Création, on the François Mitterrand dockside. Between the city that emerges along the dock, the Loire and the wild park of the Mabon Island, the site is the meeting point of built space and nature.
A long field, that stretches up from the Palais de Justice to the Ecole Nationale Supérieure d’Architecture de Nantes, hosts two trees. Exactly in between those two trees that the Footcheball is set, taking advantage of the length and the grass, perfect ground to play on.

In this “bipolar” environment, the Footcheball is called to become a signal on this dockside. The Chaum-Room is kind of a classic french farmhouse, characterized by its two faces: one covered with thatch, along the road of the François Mitterrand dockside, facing the Mabon Island park and in touch with the concrete architecture of the Habiter les Quais lot, by Nicolas Michelin; on the other side, a metal meshed face, rhythmed by the wooden structure, with a view on the Loire, along the pedestrian paved pathway.

Thus the Chaum-Room underlines the oppositions of the Quartier de la Création. The face covered with thatch reveals the ligerian landscapes. This offers a vertical continuity to the grassed pathway that stresses the horizontality of the site, and a playful texture, in opposition with the concrete and the metal elements, and the vertical lines of the housing buildings around, on the island as well as the opposed dockside. This face turns the back to Habiter les Quais, and invites the visitor to go to the other side. On the other face, the cold metal mesh is extended in the perspective of the urban landscape of the island.

Perspective stressed by the rhythm of the wooden structure. The metal mesh offers a transparency: you can see the game from the pedestrian pathway, proposition to stop there on the banks and enjoy the game; the players can see the Loire and enjoy the light from the North, that is spread on the field and get the warm colors of the wooden panels that rig out the North interior facade. The project takes advantage of the characteristics of the site and reveals them, and it is simply put down on the field. In fact, it is set on light foundations, Krinner metal screwed in the ground, and the whole construction was prefabricated in a workshop. The structure is composed of nine timber framework porticos, eight wooden chambers for the façade and eight for the roof set in between. These chambers were prefabricated in a workshop, ensuring this way the control of the details, of the assembly, and guaranteeing a noiseless constructing site. The South facade, covered with a thickness of thatch of average 28 cm, brings a protection to the players against the sun and hot weather. Solar mask reinforced by the trees, one at each end of the Chaum-Room. The North facade offers light and ventilation, as well as the sights.

Footcheball, Quai François Mitterrand, Nantes, France
Program: playground
Architects: Agence Guinée*Potin Architectes
Design Team: Anne-Flore Guinée et Hervé Potin architects; Florian Carré in charge of the project
Engineering: ECSB (wooden structure)
Building Companies: Cruard, Le Goff
Client: Le Voyage A Nantes
Area: 60 sqm
Completion: 2014