Macdonald had been a gigantic distribution center since the 1970s, located at Macdonald Street in Paris. OMA was the master planner of the project and their proposal was rather distinctive. They preserved the old two-storied building (which extends as long as 500m), and asked 5 other architects to work on newly added programs. We were responsible for the western part of the building, and designed facilities for a junior and senior high schools, and local sports center.
Among the buildings composing macro-lot B4, B4A takes on an iconic image, the star shape of which owes everything to its location.
Standing at the tip of an acute angle at the intersection of rue Marcel Bontemps and Cours Emile Zola, its volumes focus all of its 95 accommodations around 3 vertical openings. To develop maximum linearity of the façade, the building is hollowed out and turns its façades to the best exposures. This striving for light engenders sculptural shapes where the recessed façade and alignment with the street express a continual organic movement.The wide balconies that ring the building on every floor underscore each floor with a line, like so many piled up layers. These platters rise in stacks to compose a graphic system of undulating lines that amplify its volumes. On a scale with Cours Emile Zola, it looks like an event in the city, also reflecting quality use of the outside spaces for each apartment. The building’s exterior skin is composed of fine float-finished plaster. In contrast the façades of the access balconies are clad in wooden panels, thus putting an accent on the domestic nature of their use.
The project on the city-block E2 appears as a singular and unique object; It signals the idea of a renewal of the main entry point to this neighborhood. This is why the architects chose to experiment with the implementation of two quality materials that are both complementary and opposites: brick for its domestic thickness and for its strong reference to the ground and to neighboring red brick façades; lacquered metal used for the lightness of this material and because it discretely hints at the comfort of the housing units and the use of balconies, while still avoiding their exposure to viewers from the street.
Tags: France, Vigneux-sur-Seine Commune Comments Off on 68 Social Rental Housing Units, 1 Residence For Physically Disabled Persons in Vigneux-sur-Seine Commune, France by MARGOT-DUCLOT Architectes Associés
Levitt Bernstein have completed a high density, sustainable, affordable housing project in Islington, London based around the concept of ‘productive landscapes.’ All homes are designed to meet London Housing Design Guide, Lifetime Homes and the Borough’s own detailed accessibility standards. A large ground floor, fully accessible wheelchair user apartment has also been carefully designed as an exemplar wheelchair user dwelling.
With insufficient core populations to support public structures, the typology of dwelling has attained the highest level of refinement within the Arctic’s unique climate. Pre-WWII indigenous Inuit Housing Types had embedded connections to the local landscape, its orientation, materials and fabrication, while embracing the nomadic Inuit lifestyle. With zero ecological footprint, these temporal dwellings employed opportunities from the landscape and atmosphere to form a complex shelter that negotiated thermal performance, local materials, soft construction techniques, program and cultural values.
Project Research and Design Team: Neeraj Bhatia (Director), Tracy Bremer, Mary Casper, Zachariah Glennon, Alicia Hergenroeder, Brian Lee & Sonia Ramundi
Funded by: Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts, MIT Lawrence B. Anderson Award & Rice School of Architecture Faculty Research Grant
LEVS architecten has won an international competition for the design of a new residential area nearby the Russian city of Kazan. The winning master plan and architectural concept take a ‘Dutch approach’ to create a living environment for approximately 17,000 residents. Intimate dimensions, green spaces, informal bike paths and walkways, adequate facilities, and spirited architecture together make the Machaon Valley a sustainable community.
Direction Paris suburb, and more particularly the town of Montreuil, a village that has preserved all its nature, fitting perfectly to the “Grand Paris” Project. This project that gathers the main raising architecture issues held by the city of Paris. Indeed, reaching the demographic requirements inherent to the population’s growth implies an increase of the buildings density.
Many municipalities like the city of Geneva, Switzerland, have already amended their rules planning in order to increase buildable volumes in elevation.
There are two parts to the programme: sheltered dwellings for 24 residents and a day centre for the elderly.
The ground floor and half of the first floor are occupied by the day centre, and the sheltered dwellings occupy the rest of this floor and levels two and three.
Taking into account the context of a blend of populations, memories of bygone activities and the many built styles and uses expressed in the surrounding built environment, this operation includes a gymnasium, atop which 69 social housing units have been built. Its first aim is to hybridize the industrial scale with the more intimate one of the individual housing unit.
The building sits in a neighbourhood shopping lane in Nakanobu, just south to the central district of Tokyo. The town is a mixture of old and new. A grandma’s confectionary and a jazz festival, pensioners among young couples, all share the same streets happily together. The site locates itself in the vicinity of a newsstand, a bathhouse and alike. In order to fit in to this yet humble liveliness of the town, the building’s scale is restrained to those of the neighbouring buildings, 4 stories with only 12 units.
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