Bay of Somme motorway service station
Case study
Bay of Somme motorway service station, on the A16, France
Project data
Project name: Motorway service station, Bay of Somme, A16
Location: On the A16 motorway, 10km north of the city of Abbeville
in France
Planning: Competition 1995, 1st prize
Construction period: 1998–99
Area: 20ha in total, of which 10ha is parkland
Cost: €4.0 million (total), €2.4 million (park)
Landscape architect: HYL – Pascale Hannetel, Arnaud Yver, Christophe Laforge
Architect: Bruno Mader
Engineer: Studinfra BET
Client: SANEF (Société des Autoroutes du Nord et de l’Est da la France)
and Conseil Général de la Somme
Overview
Travelling along the A16 motorway between Abbeville and Touquet in the north of France you can take a
break at the motorway services of the Bay of Somme. When you enter the services you are transported
into the characteristic landscape of the Somme department and the motorway feels far away.
This is a part of Picardie in the region between Normandie in the south and Nord Pas-de-Calais in the north.
This corner of France consists of the plain of the River Somme which crosses the department and ends
up in the Bay of Somme delta, a water-landscape that changes with the tides with a variation of several
metres per day. These fluctuations have an influence on the perception of the landscape, which is con-
stantly altering.
The A16 motorway between Paris and Calais was opened in 1998.^6 Now the coast of Picardie is only two
hours away from Paris. To promote local tourism, a competition was announced to create a service station
that would combine the functional needs of motorway drivers with the provision of information and inter-
pretation related to the Bay of Somme. In this respect, it was a pioneering project and it demonstrated that
this fusion of aims could work very well. The architect Bruno Mader and the landscape architecture firm
HYL (previously Hannetel & Associés) won the competition in 1995.
3.1
Map of the Department of Somme with the A16
motorway, the motorway service station of the Bay
of Somme and the coast