The Parisian practice Barrault Pressacco recently completed a social housing project in massive stone. The operation articulates an environmental approach to design whilst echoing the Hausmannian building tradition that characterizes the French capital. The use of this natural material equally contributes to the sense of wellbeing and comfort that permeate the project.
MVRDV’s design focusses on integrating the Lyon Part-Dieu shopping complex to its surrounding urban fabric and hopes to allow everyday life to permeate through it. The street is not only extended through the building via an East-West walkway but also over it by stairways and escalators that take users up and over the complex. MVRDV pushed to reconnect the shopping centre with the facilities in its immediate context. A rearrangement of terraces on the south façade provides a direct connection with the library, and the restructured main east entrance provides access to visitors arriving from the Part-Dieu train station; which is also due to be renovated. The public realm on the street level will extend onto the shopping centre itself, and by rearranging the rooftop, technical facilities and carparks. MVRDV created a series of large terraces and green spaces that are accessible directly from the street. Restaurants, bars and cinemas all spill out onto the terraces but are also independently accessed through covered escalators that navigate around and over the building.
Design: MVRDV – Winy Maas, Jacob Van Rijs, Nathalie De Vries
Design Team: Winy Maas, Frans de Witt, Bertrand Schippan with Catherine Drieux, Antoine Muller, Daniel Diez, Maxime Cunin, Irene Todero, Jean-Rémi Houel, Leo Stuckardt, Saskia Kok, Boris Tikvarski, Paul Mas, Paul Sanders, Julius Kirchert, Andrei Ducu Pedrescu, Karolina Szóstkiewicz, Marie-Aline Rival, Solène de Bouteiller, Ana Melgarejo Lopez, Clémentine Artru, Clémentine Bory, Davide Salamino, Maxime Richaud, Javier Cuenca, Severine Bogers, Marie Saladin, Francesco Barone and Pierre-Emmanuel Escoffier
British designer David Price, who works out of offices in Provence and on the Côte d’Azur, together with his Anglo-French-American team, has completed a show-stopping ‘Glass House’ for a British client on the Cap d’Antibes. The plot is a rarity in the area; not only facing the sea-front, but also east-facing and on an almost-flat piece of land, covering 2,000 sq m. The views from the new property extend from the snow-capped southern Alps alongside Nice to the coast towards Monaco and Italy, as well as, in the near foreground, the bay and headland of La Garoupe.
The Oignies coal mine closed in 1990, leaving a whole population and its industrial mining heritage in disarray (pithead buildings, industrial buildings, head frames). The project to reinstate this territory marked by decades of mining operations, began in 2005 with the competition mounted by the Hénin-Carvin Intermunicipal Council (14 municipalities, 125,000 population). Hérault Arnod’s competition-winning project proposes a program based on music and sound, in memory of the massive noise produced by this industrial site when in production, now fallen silent in its abandonment.
Tags: France, Oignies Comments Off on 9-9 bis Transformation of a Former Mine Site Into a Cultural Complex in Oignies, France by Herault Arnod Architects
Louis de Cormontaigne’s new gymnasium is located on the tip of the island between the Moselle River on one side and the canal on the other, a bow-shaped structure across from the day school and the motorway, the location’s major acoustic challenge. The building reproduces the orientation of the high school building and is perpendicular to the canal. It has also been designed according to the input of light with broad openings in Reglit glass on the north-by-northeast side to offer unified, ideal natural light. The south-by-southwest side has been designed as very opaque, like a mask—a large acoustic shield to counter the motorway noise. Work on the volumes and roofs, reproducing the shed-like appearance, also adds to the indoor staging and the design of the sports areas. Composed of a main all-purpose gym entirely clad in wood and a secondary gym for body-building, the new gym offers the best possible conditions for all sporting activities.
The project consists of the renovation of the old painter Pierre Lemaire’s studio (1920-2007), in order to create a minimalist loft in the heart of Paris. The entire existing interior design and the slab was demolished, only the load-bearing walls and the roof were preserved. It is originally a large volume in openspace in which the client wants to create a housing necessarily involving the partitioning of spaces. However, neither the client nor the architect are willing to sacrifice the spatial quality of the workshop. The project consists in revealing the entire volume by the demolition of the ceilings and household many holes in the internal partitions so that at any point of the housing can perceive the entire volume and thus retain the feeling of space. The light floods this beautiful volume with its large glass façade (10 linear meters) and generous roof windows. In order to amplify the sense of space the project presents little variation of color and materials. White walls highlight the wooden elements (beech) that soften and warm the light. As it is a small area, the custom furniture has been designed to the smallest detail in order to optimize all possible storage spaces while adapting perfectly to the uses. In response to the client who wanted an extra room despite the small area, the architect proposed a very bright cabin perched at the top of the volume with a bird’s eye view of the living room. It has a workspace with storage and a fold-away desk and a large bed for two people.
How to fit into a site at the heart of an overall restructuring project on a city-wide scale and design an extension on an already very crowded plot of land?
As one consistent entity, the Sports Centre pulls together a large number of elements from different briefs, i.e. an already-existing gymnasium, swimming pool and indoor tennis courts with the creation of a multi-purpose arena, a boxing hall, a bodybuilding hall, two dojos, a football pitch with stands, outdoor tennis courts and a clubhouse.
The new building fits in as a unique wing to the west of the existing L-shaped buildings, unifying the whole in a U configuration.
This creates an inner courtyard, a genuine place to breathe between buildings and a generator of light that unifies all access points.
Strasbourg has had the status of European capital since 1948; it is the seat of the European Parliament and of the European Court of Human Rights. The city’s authorities quite naturally decided to a propose an educational offer designed to meet the expectations of the European and international civil servants working in the city by creating a European school. The school’s educational model, based on a multicultural approach, wide use of different languages, and emphasis on both children’s autonomy and parents’ involvement, covers a full school curriculum, from nursery school right through to the European baccalaureate. The school is located in the leafy neighbourhood of the Robertsau, near the European and international institutions. The school has nearly one thousand pupils and, to meet its requirements and those of local residents, the municipal authorities in Strasbourg decided to build an open sports centre. The programme called for the creation of a multi-sport hall and a multi-purpose hall capable of serving as a venue for events not involving sport.
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