After “The White Tree” by Sou Fujimoto, it is now Higher Roch’s turn to meet the Montpellier skies at 50 meters from the ground. At the heart of the City Roch mixed programme, the building will include 77 high-end apartments and will accommodate smart technologies.

In the midst of urban renewal, Montpellier will have a new tower. It will be like a lighthouse in the city: facing the sea and the Pic Saint-Loup. The new “spearhead” of Mediterranean architecture, the Higher Roch, planned for 2021, will house 77 housing units within its 17 floors and will be 50m high.

Designed by the agency Brenac & Gonzalez and associates, this prestigious building will be built in front of the multimodal hub of the Saint-Roch train station, in the centre of Montpellier. A sign of increasingly intuitive housing and services, the architects have designed “connected” apartments. In fact, French Tech start-ups from Montpellier were solicited, allowing the building to be classified in the category of “smart-building”. 

For example, the “Smart building” app will give residents a look at and control over different services in the neighbourhood, such as real-time parking, entertainment or decisions made by the condominium corporation. And that’s not all: with the service “Ma smart home” or “A ma place”, residents will be offered the management of their housing through their smartphone, as well as a digital concierge service.

The door to a new neighbourhood

The whole project is designed to meet the standards of the urban renewal operation that is underway in the hyper-centre of Montpellier, on former railway wasteland. On the edge of the historic city, the Saint-Roch ZAC should indeed promote the emergence of a new lively, open, mixed and sustainable neighbourhood. It covers an area of 15ha around the station and provides for the construction of 1,300 housing units and 30,000m2 for tertiary and commercial activities by the end of 2021.

Tags: France, Higher Rock, Montpellier, Saint-Roch, smart building, urban planning