ENGLISH
The "Lachenal-Degallier" site forms a triangle (a "Delta") between the Versoix cemetery, the rails, and the villas along the Louis Dégallier road. It has been in a development zone since the 1960s, but no plan has so far been able to convince all the inhabitants. The latest localized neighborhood plan (PLQ) was rejected by 63% of the votes in 2014. The 7,200 m2 site represent a great opportunity to create a new part of the neighborhood, which will include public spaces, new housing, businesses and services with the potential of improving the quality of life of all residents in Versoix.
This is why the city of Versoix and the Canton of Geneva planning office have commissioned urbz to lead a participatory process that allows everyone to express themselves and contribute to the future plan, while ensuring the feasibility of the project.
Our objective is not simply to produce a plan, but a real neighborhood project: a program together with a spatial concept and a formal plan. This neighborhood project, resulting from a collective reflection, is based on insider knowledge of the context and integrates the aspirations of the actors concerned - residents, owners and future users. We would like to demonstrate that it is easier to produce a good project through users' participation than without them, considering the issues related to densification in a residential fabric.
In order to co-create a neighborhood plan with the users urbz established a process that takes the exiting condition of the site as a starting point to bring out a shared vision, and imagine a program collectively before producing a spatial concept. urbz multiplied the formal and informal interactions with the users, the owners, tenants, the neighbors and all these who are interested in the evolution of their commune.
A first workshop was organized from 13 to 15 October 2017. The Delta V workshop sought to stimulate creativity and experimentation (rather than consensus and coherence). Neighborhood residents of all ages, master students in urban planning from ETH Zurich and HEPIA in Geneva and other architects, urban planners, artists and anthropologists from Switzerland, Berlin, Montreal, New York, Seoul and Mumbai joined working groups: "living / housing", "production and locality", "neighborhood ecology", "site dimensions", "children's neighborhood", "public space", and "the dream", which were animated by invited professionals.
The participants produced a rich and diverse material, which was exhibited in a house on site of the planned neighbourhood. This house became a work in progress exhibition, offering a convivial space of appropriation, meeting, exchange and ideation throughout the process, the inhabitants of Versoix could thus continue to engage in the different phases of work and to follow the evolution of their project.