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Prado
- Location
- Marseilles, France
- Client
- Klépierre
- Services
- Architecture
- Sector
- Retail
- Accreditation
- BREEAM Excellent
France’s first Cradle to Cradle–inspired shopping centre.
A 23,000m2 shopping centre on a constrained four-level site in southern Marseille, organised as a vertical village beneath a single glass canopy. Prado sits on Boulevard Michelet in the south of Marseille, adjacent to the Stade Vélodrome football stadium and connected to the wider city by metro, thirteen bus lines, and three motorways converging at the Prado roundabout. Benoy designed the project with Didier Rogeon for Klépierre, navigating a tight site and four levels of retail while keeping a coherent and walkable pedestrian experience throughout.
Dates2018
Size
23,000m2
The design moves away from the conventional retail-box typology by treating the four levels as an interconnected vertical village, with internal walkways shaped like city streets rather than mall corridors. A 1,750-pane glass canopy covers the entire building like a hairnet, drawing daylight down into the lower floors and, just as importantly on the Mediterranean coast, sheltering the centre from sun and the mistral winds. Sunlight channelled by the canopy supports a double- height indoor planted wall at the heart of the building.
A sustainability brief carried into materials and operation
Prado was conceived as the first Cradle to Cradle–inspired shopping centre in France, with a strong emphasis on recyclable and eco- friendly materials, and was designed to achieve BREEAM Excellent. A green roof tops the building, continuing the green character of the surrounding southern Marseille neighbourhoods and giving the centre a public-realm asset at upper level. Prado opened in March 2018, anchored by a four-floor Galeries Lafayette flagship.
