In Betton, north of Rennes, we are in the heart of the woodland: a terrain full of pastures, marked by dense hedges and hollow paths lined with beautiful, tall trees. Retail buildings gnaw away at the edges of the site, transforming our perception of it. In fact, any new constructions are bound to be seen as intruders in a natural agricultural landscape worked by human hands, a landscape symbolized by rows of plants and the walkways that border them.

Since the project was developed within the framework of a competition, we agreed to work with the concept of intrusion into the landscape and design the new shopping centre as a “spaceship”, a flying saucer from elsewhere, whose pilot decided to land in the fields. To achieve this effect, the proposal preserves the existing landscape, leaving all elements outside the footprint of the constructions untouched. The project’s docked spaceship effect is thus complete, an effect highlighted by the contrast with the place in which the interplanetary craft has touched down.

All the built elements, including the shopping centre itself and the car parks, are laid out in an ellipsoidal ground plan. The steel ensemble is characterized by curved, rounded facades which clearly reflect an aeronautic aesthetic. There are few dominant colours in the composition, other than that of polished steel, which underlines the project’s “machine-like” character. Set down in nature, the project is also open to it; the principal entrance encompasses a large, pre-existing copse of tall trees, so that the road leading to the shopping centre brings to mind a forest path…