HE:AL Campus

• The geography of the Dipbech urban valley, which needs to be rewilded so it can fully play its role as an ecological corridor structuring the city’s various development hubs.
• The campus’s public spaces, whose user comfort is in synergy with the restoration of natural environments (riparian forest, wooded edges, meadows, wetlands, etc.), serving as a support for soft mobility.
• Everyday spaces in symbiosis with architecture (terraces, balconies, loggias), whether shared or productive (biosolar): a vertical landscape offering breathing space and a connection to nature on every floor.

By rapidly and collaboratively installing all the components of a complex natural ecosystem (water, riparian forest, woodlands, herbaceous layers), we provide the HE:AL campus with a new structuring ecology that cares for living capital and organizes the site.

This framework is built through extensive work on creating living soils, introducing diverse plant layers, slowing down the water cycle at the site scale, and designing a vertical landscape fully intertwined with the architecture.

The landscapes thus created generate ever-changing atmospheres that reveal natural cycles. Tree stumps and dead trunks become habitats for small wildlife and humus for the soil; layers of bark and foliage mark the paths; piles of stones and bird perches act as seed traps. A whole mosaic of micro-habitats whose management practices must be guided by an adapted approach to ensure their sustainability and ecological functioning.

• Inhabited landscape: the building podiums can accommodate on their roofs a thick layer, about 60 cm, planted mainly with multi-stem shrubs.

• Accessible landscape: intermediate roofs will have a thinner layer, about 40 cm, planted with smaller species and herbaceous plants. These soils will be shaped to allow micro-natural environments to develop, adapted to each substrate thickness.

• Energy landscape on inaccessible roofs: the highest roofs are ideal for installing biosolar systems (no shading from other buildings). A thin herbaceous layer (around 20 cm) will be planted, on which solar panels are installed. Plant evapotranspiration cools the underside of the panels, prevents overheating, and thus increases electricity production (by about 10 to 20%).

Contrary to the trend of making all buildings adaptable or reversible to anticipate the unpredictable, we are betting on targeted reversibility to strike the right balance in the project’s carbon footprint. Thus, we approach adaptability and reversibility at the urban scale, rather than solely at the building scale, to address reversibility—and therefore the site’s circular economy—in a far more realistic, ambitious, and productive way.

The diversity of proposed urban forms (and the ‘architectural bestiary’) makes it possible to accommodate various functions and therefore different types of reversibility over time.

It supports the residential journey of businesses and thus naturally contributes to a form of adaptability at the campus scale. Circular economy then applies to the entire site and its extensions, rather than simply to the buildings.

Why are buildings with uniform heights considered the norm when they can—and should—accommodate multiple uses or functions that are sometimes very different?
We choose to challenge this ‘ready-made thinking’ by proposing here, in a targeted way, a few buildings with variable heights. These naturally offer very different spatial conditions (clear height, outdoor views, visual connections…) that will more effectively meet the needs of the many users and uses hosted. At the same time, they help create an additional step toward adaptability and reversibility of spaces.