BREATHING NEW LIFE INTO FORMER INDUSTRIAL SITES

Occupying a former IBM site in Bordeaux, France, the Noème project is now a residential community that recognises the power and virtues of nature. In Italy, Covivio has completed The Sign, an office complex that integrates seamlessly into its environment, now one of Milan’s prestige business centres. Both projects successfully repurpose heritage sites with rich histories by combining past, present and future for the benefit of those who live in these new communities.

RETHINKING MOBILITY IN A NEW WORLD

Before The Sign, all 40,000 m² of the former Vedani foundry were inaccessible to the public. The industrial infrastructures presented an insurmountable and forbidding blockage, while The Sign is the complete opposite: an open space with traffic and communication links re-established beneath one of the buildings.

“The central idea is”, explains Umberto Gatti, Portfolio Manager at Covivio Italy, “for this space to be used during the day by people who come here to eat in its extensive choice of restaurants, rather than just those who work here”. In Bordeaux, Noème is responding to precisely the same need for open access. Creating this 35,000 m² project, which will eventually offer 700 homes with its own through routes and internal roads required the designers to think carefully from the outset about the life of an entire community.

“What we’ve created is a new gateway to the city”, explains Covivio Project Manager Sophie Combastet.

THE WILL TO CREATE A COMMUNITY

As Sophie Combastet explains, the ultimate aim of Noème has always been to combine all the services residents would expect to find in a residential complex with a more unexpected range of facilities to “create the feel of a community and provide all the facilities that such a community would need for sport, home deliveries and sociability”. So the facilities now available to residents include a community meeting space, a greenhouse, a volleyball court and a shared urban gîte. Creating the conditions for community life is also a key character trait of The Sign, where the ground floor is designed for sociability: “By extending the existing spaces, including the IULM university garden to include a square, we’ve put in place the conditions for creating a community that brings the area to life, regardless of whether or not the members of that community work here”, says Umberto Gatti.

The Sign is not only fully integrated into its immediate environment, but also very well connected to the rest of the city by the nearby metro system.

“NATURE IS RECLAIMING ITS PLACE IN THE CITY”

Both projects embody a shared desire to integrate nature into the built environment, rather than settling for purely decorative gestures. Sophie Combastet again: “With Noème, you get a very real feeling that nature is reclaiming its place in the city. You have to make your own way through the paths: the landscape designer is totally delighted!”. To leave breathing space between residences and avoid excessive massing, the new Bordeaux community has been divided into six blocks (Block 2 received the SIMI ‘Housing & Accommodation’ Award in 2025).

Consistent with the spirit of the project, the square at The Sign in Milan is open to the public all day as an extension to the city. With The Sign, “We were determined to go further than simply designing a project with the energy performance credentials needed for green certifications”, continues Umberto Gatti. “We want occupants to feel comfortable here, and we’ve achieved that by successfully integrating the project into the existing urban fabric”.

Instead of opting for stereotyped and circumscribed green spaces, the Milan and Bordeaux projects treat nature as a key contributor to the process of metamorphosis, and integrate it organically into the environment.

ADAPTABLE SPACES FOR A CONSTANTLY CHANGING WORLD

Developing a project, whether on a brownfield site or a plot of virgin land waiting for the right scheme, demands that we think very carefully about what tomorrow’s cities will look like. “Whatever happens, office space will always be in demand”, says Umberto Gatti. “All four blocks of The Sign are fully let, because the buildings are designed to be modular, clients who commit for more than ten years have the opportunity to refit the floors they occupy. Every opportunity has been taken to ensure that these buildings can continue to evolve as they mature”. Sophie Combastet also sees anticipating future uncertainties as “avoiding the spaces we build becoming frozen in time”.

Those who live in these homes must have the freedom to make them their own. Although, as she says “it’s more challenging to give a completely new building a soul from the outset”, the challenge of creating a sociable atmosphere has been met at Noème, since residents already refer to the central square as ‘the village square’.

Both perfectly integrated into the existing urban fabric, these ambitious projects have created spaces that are appropriate to today’s world, but look forward with confidence to the future.