Development of the Village Center of Bercheux.

Project: Development of the Village Center of Bercheux.
Architect: Atelier d'Architecture AIUD

Programme: The objectives expressed in the communal rural development program are mainly to reduce the space exclusively dedicated to car traffic, to give space back to other users, and to improve road safety. Additionally, it aims to contribute to creating a cohesive unit on the main street of the historic core of Bercheux.

About: The aim is to reinstall, through these developments, the possibilities for social life and community living within the village center where, as in other similar places, local shops and public services have disappeared due to the significant decrease in agricultural workers (in 1851, 51% of the active population worked in the fields, which dropped to 7% by 1961, a century later, and is estimated at 2% today), motorized transportation, and the merging of municipalities. We have observed that the street sequence to be addressed has a slight slope. As a result, there are retaining walls of limited height in the village center, which border a garden here and the old cemetery there. We take advantage of this natural relief to create a public space, not accessible to car traffic, which remains level thanks to a retaining wall separating it from the roadway, in the spirit of what can be found elsewhere in the village: this allows us to offer a convivial space for residents or walkers, but also to create a spatial identity for this 'square' that previously had no identifiable shape. A space with boundaries, although open, is more easily appropriated. To articulate the change in the street's direction and to offer more usage possibilities, we are installing a covered gallery along the retaining wall. It contributes to enhancing the presence of the small square and the continuity of the main street's space in the village. The gallery is intended to be thin, light, and delicate: steel brackets suspend a cover made of profiled sheets with small sinusoidal waves, screwed under the structure for greater visual finesse. The continuity of the ground texture and its colorimetry will help create a cohesive unit in the heart of Bercheux: we propose washed concrete (poured in place) with aggregates of similar shades to the sandstone blocks present in the village. A 'forecourt,' sober and discreet, is created at the church level with a geometric pattern, materialized by polishing the concrete. I asked an artist, Godelieve Bieswal, who works with grids, lines, and geometric abstraction, as opposed to a figurative pattern, to design a pattern for this place. The idea we proposed is to have an 'expanding' pattern from the church entrance, which seems to have been trimmed over time and extends beyond its visible limits.