This building's programme fits its form and execution so perfectly it's hard to believe that the project was originally a speculative proposal without a function by French prac-tice Marret & Fernandez Architectes. It was presented as a fully resolved building, a piece of architectural concrete sculpture that al-ready took into account its site - a scrap piece of apparently unusable wasteland on a dual carriageway on the northern outskirts of Marseille, on the way to the huge container port. It could have been a house, office, shop or just about anything else. The design was only modified internally to become a dental studio when a local practitioner Monsieur Tourrolier heard about the proposal in 2017. The design found the client, the programme was made to fit - not the other way around. It's located in a hot and dusty landscape that blends industrial and commercial be-tween the hills of Verduron behind and the Saumaty-Seon industrial valley to the south. The gantry cranes and shipping containers at the rear of the port rub shoulders with vacant lots, detached family homes on walled single plots, and the warehouse units and offices built recently as part of the area's planning designation as an urban free zone. Traffic on the highway is dense.
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