The association la Manufacture des Paysages organizes an ideas competition having for support Villeneuvette and the "Coeur d'Hérault" territory. This competition is being organised with the collaboration of the Municipality of Villeneuvette and the School of Architecture of Languedoc-Roussillon, Montpellier. The Royal Manufacture of Villeneuvette was built at the XVII century in the South of France, 30km from the Mediterranean. It was part of a great scale framework planning. This installation project included the construction of the South Channel, the port of Sète and a series of wool cloth manufactures, which were supposed to partly export their productions towards the Middle East, making it possible to thwart the productions emanating of Holland. This factory was designed to be an autonomous place of production equipped with its own habitat, school, gardening grounds, factory and a clever system of irrigation useful for energy production. During the centuries which followed, the regional economy evolved towards a greater diversification. Vine growing took however an important place. The factory of Villeneuvette was closed in the middle of the fifties, the workmen's houses and the rest of the frame gradually became a residential community and becomes a borough in 1803. The urban frame is circumscribed in one square kilometer, accessible only through three doors. It is surrounded by three hundred and fifty hectares of wood. The main access to Villeneuvette can be reached by strolling through a long alley boarded by trees. The borough has an undeniable quality which charms all those who enters it for the first time: it is a small world inside the world. The elected officials, as well as the population, want to maintain this harmony. The agglomeration of Montpellier, located at 50 kilometers south-east of Villeneuvette is in rapid expansion. The construction of freeways make the back-country more accessible. It makes Villeneuvette and other small boroughs more and more attractive. It hurts the economy of theses villages to be progressively surrounded by allotments and isolated houses on huge pieces of land. This phenomenon is called urban sprawl. These small villages are not prepared enough in term of regulation of adequate town planning, and their inhabitants cannot resist temptation to sell their agricultural land so that it can be turned into low cost construction grounds. Villeneuvette resisted this land pressure. The desire of its inhabitants is to maintain its residential quality : a good place to live and that shall not become a tourist attraction.
This contest relates to various scales of interrogations:
- Problems involving the factory of Villeneuvette, the parks and the irrigation system. The relations between these infrastructures and the whole territory of the borough.
- What can be learned from Villeneuvette's design? Its space organization, its density, its urban and rural quality, and the quality of life which results from this.
- Villeneuvette as a source of inspiration for the urban organization of the surrounding boroughs that also have to find urban and architectural answers to the expansion of their territories (Mourèze, Cabrières, Nébian, Clermont Hérault, and others of the Country Coeur d'Hérault, which have populations varying from 400 to 8000 inhabitants).

This contest is opened to students of various disciplines: structure, town planning, landscape, social sciences, fine art. The deadline to submit projects is fixed during 1st June 2004. It can be used to stimulate the urban thought. This contest could be the first step of a series of interrogations on various scales: borough, village, future country "Larzac-coeur d'Hérault". For information, the owner of the factory, of the XVIII century garden and a part of the irrigation system : the Department of Hérault, programmed their rebuilding.