Montaudran Aerospace Campus
Year: 2011
Team: Conor O'Shea
This is a a ten-year metropolitan framework plan for cultural, ecological, and infrastructural programming on the site of the former Montaudran Airfield in Toulouse, France.
The proposal is situated in the wake of recent events such as the departure of the A380 operations, Airbus, and Air France from the Montaudran Airfield and seeks to channel economic and ecological flows in and around the site towards a synthetic urban strategy. It is a framework to guide public and private development on the site over the next ten years and aims to perpetuate the city and the site’s rich aerospace legacy. This is attempted by situating the guiding plan at the intersection of the site’s hydrological conditions, Toulouse’s demand for private housing, as well as the expanding educational and cultural initiatives of the neighboring University of Toulouse.
The current location of air transportation infrastructure in Toulouse reveals the outward movement of airports from the denser fabric of Toulouse to its periphery to accommodate an increase in airplane size, traffic, as well as the arrival of oversized A380 parts from across the globe for assembly in Toulouse. The historic Montaudran Airfield, left in the wake of this movement, becomes a site for new programming.
