Winner of the National Competition for City Entrances 2011 – awarded by the LUR (Urban and Rural League).

The Ria de Pornic is a coastal valley carved by the ocean, in which the sea penetrated in ancient times. Today, it presents a landscape of marsh crossed by a thin stream: the canal of Haute Perche. After a 20th century that overshadowed its assets, the Ria is back in the limelight. Pornic has chosen to reclaim the site to make it an entrance of honor to the city and give the valley its vocation of passage and human settlement.
The valley of the ria overlooking the port and the historic center dominated by its medieval castle is also a place of rupture that splits the town of Pornic in two: the blue road (2×2 lanes) and the railway accentuates the cut of the indentation of the coast. By reinvesting this wasteland around the Ria, the challenge for the town is both to connect the two hillsides, the two entities of Pornic, to find there a center of life turned both to the sea and inland specific to the history of this port city, to relieve congestion in the center by creating new axes of traffic, while developing the tourist offer of the city.

Our study is based on a sustainable development approach.
It consists of stitching the urban fabric along a north/south axis and recomposing a landscape from the sea to the land thanks to the history of the plants and their derivatives that have always passed through these places.
This approach is part of a global project which consists of offering, around a 14-hectare park, a programme of housing, shops, leisure facilities and tourism for residents and visitors. A new urban space, the Ria completes the range of services available on the historic site and extends the promenade along the quays.