Route 5G

 

 

Program Route 5G – The Plural Road: imagining future infrastructures in relation to buildings, landscape and their environment
Location Champs-sur-Marne, France
Length 1 km experimental road
Year 2017
Client Eiffage
Team Éric Cassar, Tinhinan Laoubi, Aitor Ugartemendia Jimenez, Osama Abou Samra, Mathieu Bich
Partners Eiffage Aménagement, Eiffage Route, IFSTTAR

 

General principles

This speculative research explores new ways of conceiving the relationship between roads, buildings and their environment.

While contemporary urban planning often juxtaposes infrastructures and architecture, this study investigates possible interactions between the built environment, public space, landscape, climate and mobility.

Building upon research conducted by Eiffage Route and IFSTTAR, the project opens new avenues for imagining infrastructures capable of engaging with their context rather than merely crossing it.

Rather than a uniform technical object, Route 5G is envisioned as a living, evolving and relational system capable of adapting to uses, seasons, events and urban transformations.

 

The Plural Road: both connection and place

The road is no longer simply a means of movement connecting one point to another. It also becomes a place capable of interacting with the buildings that accompany it, with inhabitants, with climate and with the landscapes it traverses.

According to seasons, uses, flows, weather conditions or times of day, some events appear while others disappear. Spaces change function, new situations emerge and the relationship between infrastructure and environment evolves.

Through 35 ideas organised into 7 themes, this research reconsiders the very definition of the road: its location, thickness, limits, uses and its capacity to become a genuine shared environment.

  • 1. Configuration and Convertibility (ideas 1–4)
  • 2. Redefining Thresholds (ideas 5–6)
  • 3. Street Layers and Identity (ideas 7–12)
  • 4. Matter and Light (ideas 13–19)
  • 5. Appropriation and Conviviality (ideas 20–23)
  • 6. Situational and Climatic Poetry (ideas 24–30)
  • 7. Surprise and Serendipity (ideas 31–35)

 

A Relational Infrastructure

This research opens numerous perspectives and potential applications, only partially presented here.

It considers the road as an active component of the city, capable of generating uses, atmospheres, services and new relationships between buildings, public spaces, inhabitants and territories.

The road thus becomes a mediator between the different components of the city rather than a simple transport infrastructure.

 

The road between place and connection, between here and tomorrow.