To the southeast of Toulouse, the Aerospace Campus, the European center for innovation in the field, is planned around the old Montaudran runway, symbol of the Aéropostale adventure of the past. The architects OMA and XDGA have designed a continuous architectural structure, a succession of interior landscaped courtyards aligned along the historically classified runway. The old runway converted into an urban boulevard constitutes a support line for the future development of the district.

The imposing architectural structure and its succession of courtyards open onto an explicitly artificial, but nonetheless familiar, territory. A territory made up of miniaturized urban agriculture aligned within a rational layout. The highly organized garden utilizes a number of techniques borrowed from the world of agriculture, allowing the whole to immediately take on a physically coherent aspect. The little piece of domesticated countryside quickly and readily organizes a series of adoptable, beautiful, joyous spaces. The goal lies in rendering these spaces usable and meaningful, with little resources.

This organizing landscape includes in its makeup from the start technical facilities, sports fields, parking areas, parks, and public promenades. These “urban fields” are also where the various services tied to the functioning of the campus are established: orchards, water as well as waste processing and storage, energy production, soil fertilization, recycling, composting.