The new city of Montpellier
Montpellier is a booming area, often voted one of the places the French would most like to live and the number of residents is growing year on year. To cope with the influx, the town is expanding in an extraordinary architectural experiment.
The city has been expanding for a while - at first it went north towards the hills but in a calculated decision to control the growth and make it something special, the town is spreading south to the sea. The initiative that was hatched in 1977 by then Mayor Georges Frêche. The goal was to create the perfect city. The architectural team started with a blank canvas and turned the outskirts of Montpellier into a real-life laboratory of architecture.
Antigone
The Antigone neighbourhood, named after the ancient Greek play, was erected principally during the 1970s and 1980s. It has plenty of grand neo-classical buildings and wide-open boulevards, including the central axis nicknamed the Champs-Elysées by locals. The most innovative architects in the world have designed buildings here but it’s happened in a very organised way. It’s not a messy hotchpotch of looks, there’s a consistent theme being woven through this new part of Montpellier. Wide open spaces, height restrictions, even the look has to a certain extent been controlled although architects have been given a free hand overall while keeping to a few rules.