Enabling Living Together

An interview with Gaëlle Hamonic and Jean-Christophe Masson

- Javier Arpa

Javier Arpa: How do you see the future of the city at Hamonic Masson?

Gaëlle Hamonic and Jean Christophe Masson: The city of the future places humans at its heart. It is local and must have its own identity. The city of the future won’t lose its unique features or complexity. We promote compact, intense cities and fight urban sprawl, whether it’s low-density suburbs in the United States or the Chinese high-density, low-intensity model. In order to make the city of the future pleasant to live in, we have to facilitate soft mobility, promote density with quality housing, reintroduce nature and guarantee air quality. We believe that we must restore the complexity of historical towns, rediscover pleasant areas and be able to explore them on foot.

JA: Isn’t Paris the city of the future to some extent, then?

GA and JCM: Paris is dense. It has a hierarchy of small, medium-sized and large streets, with the complexity of an urban fabric made up of porous islets connected to the street by permeable ground floors supplemented by a multitude of stacked historical layers.

JA: Outside Europe, which cities have made an impression on you?