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architect: Petrie Architects
Place: Marseille, France
Completion Date: September 2023
In 1995, the reconstruction work of the Port of Marseille in France started. The Euroméditerranée project, as it is known, oversees the construction of office towers, high-rise residential buildings and the conversion of vacant industrial buildings into cultural centres. The latest expansion project in the Euroméditerranée is the La Porte Bleue high-rise residential tower designed by the Paris-based firm Pietri Architectes. Structurally, the tower is defined by a grid of 414 concrete vaults. La Porte Bleue is connected to the cluster of towers along Rue Jean-Gaspard Vence, including La Marseillaise and the CMA CGM headquarters, designed by the offices of Jean Nouvel and Zaha Hadid respectively.
The tower’s exoskeleton of white concrete arches is intended to recall the legacy of European rationalist architecture, albeit in a Mediterranean coastal context. According to the project description, the white exterior “references the Mediterranean, the color of the limestone.” La Porte Bleue also bears similarities to the office’s previous work, which often featured coastal design styles marked by light colors.
La Porte Bleue’s rationalist grid of arches was clearly drawn from the Italian Civilization palaces designed for Benito Mussolini’s Esposizione Universale Roma (EUR), whose structure was its main decoration.
Due to its location between the city and the water, the firm believes that La Porte Bleue’s arched form reflects the Port of Marseille’s status as the gateway to France.
The tower will serve the Arenque district, a post-industrial port that has been transformed into France’s third largest region. The area also has many cultural attractions that attract tourism thanks to investments in the European Mediterranean Project.
The 173-foot-tall building serves office workers and visitors. Its mixed-use project has 250 vacation rentals managed by Odalays on the first 11 floors and residential units on the first seven floors.
There are 68 residential units in the tower. Floors 12 to 16 are single-family residences, with unit types ranging from one to four bedrooms. The top two floors, 17th and 18th, house larger duplex units with double-height ceilings.
Unusually, Jean-Baptiste Pietri, the founder of Pietri Architectes, was both the client and the designer of the project. Petrie inherited Constructa from his father. The company is the developer of Les Quais d’Arenc, which includes La Porte Bleue, La Marseillaise in Nouvel and Tower M99, a high-rise residential tower designed by Pietri Architectes and expected to be completed in 2027.
La Porte Bleue is built on top of an existing underground car park, which is six levels underground.The company told onethe “existing structure,” referring to the parking lot, “has been dimensioned for a building with very different geometries. The difficulty therefore lies in balancing the overall building with possible structural changes to the existing infrastructure.” Initially, the An office building is planned for the site.
There are 414 concrete vaults in La Porte Bleue, cast from concrete sourced locally in the town of Aubagne. Larger double-height vaults were built for the suites and duplex apartments within the tower. The concrete vaults are nearly 3 feet deep, providing shade to the loggia space and reducing solar heat gain and glare from the glazing.
The tower’s arches are connected by individual Y-shaped modules, which are lifted one by one to the tower by crane. The modules were manufactured off-site, cast in 13 different sizes and connected to the tower’s concrete beams and floor slabs via aluminum joinery.
White reinforced concrete was specified for the building’s exterior walls. A special mixture was created with a higher than normal exposure level designed to prevent corrosion that occurs when a building is exposed to the ocean. To achieve sustainability goals, Vinci Construction and Méditerranée Prefabrication developed a low-carbon concrete.
All heating and cooling of the building is provided by Thassalia geothermal installations, which generate energy by pumping water from the Port of Marseille into a network of heat exchangers and heat pumps. It is part of the Euroméditerranée sustainable urban plan.
The company commented: “An effective alternative to air conditioning: Ocean geothermal energy offers the potential for effective and economical cooling of large port cities. Seawater has a constant temperature throughout the year, so refrigerators can be extracted from seawater to cool buildings.”
Project specifications
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