In Nantes, the new building on Place du Commerce raises criticism

• Work on the Commerce-Feydeau sector, which began nearly three years ago, is due to be completed at the end of 2022.

• Still under construction, the Place du Commerce will be lengthened and decorated with fountains.

• The underground car park has been modernized.

  It has reopened since Monday.

In work for more than a year, the new redeveloped Place du Commerce is eagerly awaited by residents. An important step was taken on Monday with the opening of the modernized underground car park and its reception building. Except that the discovery of this room housing two elevators and a staircase, covered with a glass roof and an aluminum cladding that will not be vegetated, is accompanied over the days by a flood of criticism. In question: an architecture considered "austere" and "massive" for this emblematic place.

"It's practical but really not aesthetic", laments a passer-by, who "does not understand" the changes made on the square.

“Before there were florists in the same place, now we have that…” another woman from Nantes is surprised.

"This entrance to the parking lot is a horror ...", adds a local woman at the exit of her building overlooking the square.

The bell sound is similar among traders.

“The place itself is fine, but parking is a problem… What a wart it is,” the employees of Bouillon de Commerce, a restaurant located just across the street, are saddened.

"We're ransacking the city center with this atrocious thing"

But it is on social networks, as often, that the criticisms are the most virulent. "It's a comeback to the 80s with a grid-type facade", laments Blazé44. “It's just awful, filthy, we couldn't do worse with just behind the magnificent Fnac building !! There it is just like a prison entrance. It's completely absurd to see that we are ransacking the city center with this atrocious thing, ”protests David. “Horrible to have allowed such an entrance in the middle of the Place du Commerce. It spoils the view, ”reproaches another Internet user.

The municipal opposition does not say anything else.

Fayçal Chebourou, spokesperson for Mieux vivre à Nantes, the new party of the Nantes right, believes that "Johanna Rolland and the PS-EELV majority in Nantes, who piloted this project, were careful not to reveal the new Commerce wart. in their model!

"With them, it's like on Wish, the result is less beautiful than the photo", he quipped.

It must be said that the visual of the new building did not appear, in fact, on the computer-generated images broadcast during the consultation of the project.

An absence which was "not intentional", assures Jacqueline Osty, the architect-urban planner in charge of the development project of the Feydeau-Commerce sector.

"You have to judge the whole, not just the object"

Solicited by

, Jacqueline Osty considers that "the subject of aesthetics is not anecdotal" and that "criticism is normal" in an urban project. The winner of the Grand Prix de l'urbanisme 2020, however, invites "patience" before deciding on this new place of Commerce. “You have to judge the whole, not just the aedicule as an object. However, the work is in progress, the fountains are not installed, many plants are missing. Tomorrow we will have a large square, with entertainment, terraces that will be able to expand. It will be very different. "

Raum, the Nantes architecture firm that designed the building criticized, specifies that the metal cladding is not completed and that it is intended to "cover the whole" of the room.

She recalls that the project has been validated by numerous bodies, including the Architecte des Bâtiments de France, known to be demanding.

The agency insists on the search for “transparencies” offered by the outer envelope and on its neutrality allowing it to “take on slightly different colors depending on the weather”.

Finally, she specifies that the construction had to adapt to "many constraints", in particular that of dealing with the existing car park.

Work on the new pedestrian plateau will be completed at the end of 2022 with the last phase of planting.

"But the essentials will be finalized before the summer", assures Jacqueline Osty.

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