Urban Flea Market Survey

TYPE Participatory urban diagnostic

STATUS Completed

DATE  2018 – 2019

LOCATION Bagnolet, Montreuil, Paris

FINANCIAL SUPPORTERS REI HABITAT, ICADE

Looking through a magnifying glass, a territorial diagnosis

In the first quarter of 2018, Quatorze joined a working group led by ICADE and REI in response to the Re-inventing Cities competition organised by the Cities Climate Leadership Group (C40).  The team’s focus was on the Porte de Montreuil site. After reaching the final phase of the competition, ICADE and REI wanted to base their architectural proposal on an in-depth understanding of the social and spatial realities of the site. Quatorze was then commissioned to carry out an urban diagnostic report and provide recommendations to the project’s designers. The final design was thus guided by a better understanding of the living environment and the social issues linked to the evolution of the space. This approach allowed the project to be more coherent with the site and its inhabitants.

The flea market, the central node of the Porte de Montreuil, was the subject of a particularly thorough analysis: based on this study, a co-design workshop was carried out over 6 months in close collaboration with merchants representing the market. The architectural proposal was thus refined to adapt to the needs identified by these expert users, despite the constraints of rather complex specifications. In addition to the urban project, this diagnostic work was published in two booklets, which accompanied the final submission in the selection phase.