The development of Place Mésirard is the result of five years of environmental and landscape studies, completed by traffic studies and cultural positioning.
The ability to bury a 400-space car park in place of an overhead car park has enabled the proposal of a seven-storey underground car park wrapped around a skylight and plants in the heart of Place Mésirard. This is the beginning of the process of creating the place.
The infrastructures distributed on the square have taken into account the enhancement, the views on the Royal Chapel, the Belfry, the rediscovery of the Blaise, the optimization of the surfaces and the concern to ramify these projects towards the rest of the district, by treating squares, small squares, streets and alleys, in a simple and coherent way
This project, intimately linked to the historical context, in the heart of a remarkable fabric, symbolizes its renewal and its influence; it is based on the development of a decorative motif inspired by the constructive thought of Philibert de l’Orme, the jewel of the chapel of Anet, a few kilometres from Dreux. By projecting one of the famous geometric patterns on the ground, using the void left by the centre of the car park as the centre of the composition, the idea is to draw the visitor upwards, into the heart of a moving, noisy, enveloping, reassuring, refreshing planting device, softening the very idea of the oppressive city.
The development thus created in Dreux aims to recall the attention paid to a transversal vision between landscape, urbanism and architecture in the respect of this cultural heritage and in the concern of its harmonious development.