Grammar of a new city, a tale about the transformation of a territory through its agricultural and culinary culture.

The Luberon is a french land where history has given us a rich cultural and natural patrimony. Indeed, it is marked by an important number of castle that still attract a lot of people, as well as embodying the past of each city around. On the other hand, the Luberon has also a strong local culture, mostly driven by its agriculture and gastronomy.

Based on these observations, our project aims to bind the Luberon intangible patrimony to its physical and material patrimony. The castles become then a receptacle of the local initiatives, whereas these ones awake and revive those mummified places. In this way, it creates a net of agricultural and gastronomic strongholds that lean on three pillars : craftsmanship, education and tourism.

The city of La Tour d’Aigues assume an important place in this web, mostly because of its castle attractivity, but also because of its geografical situation as the south entrance of the Luberon. Regarding the agricultural specificities of the city, its castle will naturally highlight the work of local winemakers and host a common winery. As a result, this program will help the castle to overtake its cultural function and link it to productive and educational ones in order to bind it back to its local identity.

The project then develop itself around three public places that accompany the visitors through the different moments of the wine making. These three huge slabs are also meant to offer free and adaptative spaces for the city to host different local events all year long. They are supported by a load-bearing system composed of local stones that slightly integrates itself into the existing castle’s remains.

In this way, the project is meant to be anchored in the continuity of the existing castle to bind the urban and architectural structures already there, to amplify them ; but although affirming itself as a new potential for La Tour d’Aigues.