La Fabrique des Morgines
“With the Fabrique des Morgines, we sought to move beyond the opposition between industry and housing: to create a productive building that protects, connects, and fully contributes to neighborhood life.”
Programme: Industrial and craft building
Clients: SPG
Dates: 2024 -
Status: in progress
Located near the Carroll housing complex, the Fabrique des Morgines is part of the transformation of Geneva’s industrial zones initiated by the redevelopment of the Praille–Acacias–Vernets district. The project addresses a delicate problem: enabling productive activities and housing to coexist. It therefore proposes a hybrid building which functions both as a working tool and as an urban interface. An active ground floor, open to the street, accommodates shopfronts, showrooms and services, while the more industrial programs are set back, thereby protecting the surrounding residential environment. The materiality of the façades, made of wood, softens the presence of the building and anchors it within the residential atmosphere.
Conceived as a connecting element, the Fabrique encourages porosity and movement. Generous thoroughfares, a stepped staircase, a suspended garden, fluid landscaping and shared spaces reinforce social connections. Its rational structural grid offers great flexibility, capable of accommodating a diversity of uses and evolving over time. The construction approach favors sobriety and low-tech solutions — low-carbon concrete, recycled aluminum and responsibly-sourced wood — in order to combine efficiency, durability and quality of use. More than simply a building for activities, the Fabrique des Morgines becomes a key contributor to neighborhood life.
Programme: Industrial and craft building
Clients: SPG
Dates: 2024 -
Status: in progress