Architectural Salvage: Reviving a Floating Shelter

In February 2018 Asile Flottant/ La péniche Louise-Catherine sank under the waters of the River Seine after a period of intense rain and flooding. This seemingly anonymous 70m long ferrocement barge is a lesser known work of Le Corbusier: a former coal barge reconfigured to serve as a floating homeless shelter in Paris from 1929-1995. In 2008 Louise Catherine was designated as a historic monument by the Direction régionale des affaires culturelles. Including Corbusian elements whilst retaining the original industrial character of the barge, the vessel is a striking work of fluvial architecture, marrying spatial and social ambitions with aquatic constraints. This Design Studio will focus on designing a space to safely house the reconstructed barge, whilst enabling the remaking of the vessel to be a spectacle for participants, curious observers and the city of Mumbai. Through a combination of individually-made large scale models, urban to detail scale drawings this space and the situations it enables will be imagined as a series of props that sit within or on top of a floating dry dock on the Royal Bombay Yacht club seafront.