The New Amédée Saint-Germain District / LAN

By 2030, the city of Bordeaux aims for European influence with Euratlantique. With the arrival of the high-speed rail link (LGV) in 2017, this Operation of National Interest (OIN) focuses on the construction of a business center around the Saint-Jean station. Thus, the urban renewal initiated nearly twenty years ago continues between the Sacré-Cœur district and the railway tracks. It includes the development of the former industrial site of the ZAC Amédée-Saint-Germain, one of the five areas of the Saint-Jean Belcier project. The Sacré-Cœur district was spontaneously built in a very homogeneous urban form composed of large residential blocks, occasionally interrupted by 20th-century buildings. The fabric consists of Bordeaux “échoppes”, small single-story townhouses spread over long and narrow plots, a kind of pastiche of classical palaces. The neighborhood has a very small number of facilities and thus lacks attractiveness on a metropolitan scale. The ZAC plot is located to the south, on the edge of the so-called “stone city”, in a topographical enclave: it is separated from street level by 4.20 meters due to railway activities. Situated between Rue de Bègles and Rue Furtado, it borders Rue Amédée-Saint-Germain and the network of tracks. It is full of some remarkable remnants of industrial activity, structures such as the forge workshop, the tanks, and the Amédée workshop, characterized by arches along their facades.