Flon Les Mercier

Located in the old industrial zone at the heart of Lausanne, at the southwest end of the quarter known as "Le Flon," this project adopts an urban strategy which is closely related to that of Richter & Dahl Rocha's "Flon-Ville" competition entry. Here, the architects were asked to develop a facade concept appropriate to the commercial purpose of the project by clearly expressing the presence of a large underground shopping complex. The program was broken into four distinct volumes, which in plan follow the perimeters of demolished warehouse buildings that once occupied the site. The larger one to the north is entirely dedicated to commercial purposes, while the other three house various functions: commercial activities at ground level, offices, and even apartments in two of the attic floors. Though this fragmentation invokes the building typologies most characteristic of Le Flon, Richter & Dahl Rocha's architectural language clashes with exiting warehouses, which for the most part comprise masonry walls pierced by small windows. Striving for the purest and most abstract form, each simple glass volume has a clarity that is heightened by its constructive details. The connection between facade and roof is treated as a continuous glass surface for the north building, while for the three other volumes, the vertical windows that open toward the inside for natural ventilation are masked on the exterior by lightweight aluminum sheets aligned with the glazed facade, giving it a more abstract and less tectonic character.