Derived from the Greek expression for “Place of Life”, the Biotope serves as a new home for the municipal administration offices of Lille. Here, the landscape compliments architecture that is designed from the notion that a green building is not only important for a healthy and productive staff, but that it is also important to nature itself.

The landscape at the ground level becomes an extension of this same principle, further developing the building’s vegetation palette with a wildscape that enhances the site’s overall biodiversity spectrum. The landscape design’s dune-inspired topology resonates with the organic expression of the regional ecotone that negotiates between continent and seashore; the Biotope, with its civic prominence, is bound to its context both administratively and ecologically.

As part of an emerging master plan that includes the surrounding yet-to-be-developed land, the urban design response for the Biotope establishes the principles that allow the peripheral open space to interlink with nature and with the rest of the city. The streetscape along the major tree-lined avenue to the west of the site is renewed with attractive space for pedestrians, the surface materiality of which resonates along a new bike lane on the site’s north edge and sets the stage for the natural continuation of comfortable, inviting, and sustainable connectivity.