Existing site: an altered spatial structure
The progressive transformation of the historical fortifications has perhaps altered their extraordinary spatial potential. A multitude of spaces of different forms, characters and uses have developed punctually according to opportunity, and each space has evolved according to its own logic. This accumulation has developed to the detriment of the overall spatial scale: that of open space previously provided by the "glacis" and water which encompassed the historic centre.

Today, the banks, often inaccessible, illegible, appear almost as those of a charming yet improbable river. There is no space for recoil, no breathing space. The space is not a whole. The water reads as an extremity, a boundary, and not a wide open space, so necessary in a city with such a dense urban fabric, which lacks any public spaces of ample dimensions.

Searching for the right scale of the emptiness
Redefine this void, and recreate a scale is the key concern of our proposal. In no case is it to make a formal historic restoration. The objective is to find the qualities of a great empty periphery which appears to us as a spatial opportunity open to many uses. It offers above all a space of recoil; it creates a distance to the city which supports a mental image that we may seize.

The spatial re-composition we propose is essentially the sculpting of the mass of trees and the remodeling of the slopes and topography. The sculpting of the vegetation consists of cutting, pruning, transplanting and planting trees in order to compose masses and voids, to reveal where possible open areas sloping to the canal such as the historical "glacis".

The transformation here concerns creating wide open spaces wherever possible along the inner bank.  This means on the one hand, re-qualifying existing parks and on the other hand, transforming some neglected areas or industrialised and service areas.

We are persuaded that this exercise constitutes an indispensable preliminary step towards the creation of the Singelpark.

A new traffic plan of the city, can provide the opportunity to in time reconfigure the outside edge of the canal. Pragmatic studies which have been conducted in many European cities have ring roads that become a succession of segments related to one-way wider circuits. We propose that one lane of cars would be freed up, providing enough space for both maintaining the car parking spaces for the neighbourhood residents and a beautiful and spacious continuous promenade opened up for the benefit of both pedestrians and cyclists.