Building a cultural center in Beaumont-Hague, in Cotentin, means to integrate an architectural project that takes benefits from the landscape qualities of this piece of peninsula. On the shore, sunken roads are planted of wooded hedges that protects from the wind, and becomes vegetal vaults to filter the light over time. These landscape elements are secular forms from the site culture but also inspiring spaces that can be employed for the design.
The House R is located at Anglet on an estate of 1000m². The relatively large dimensions of the plot (50x20m) give a horizontal lecture to the field which compose the start of the project. The North-South orientation, the sun path and the pre-existing houses around the site were also predominant data for the design of the project.
The house is set back from the street, clearing a parking space for three vehicles.
The existing headquarters of the Agglomeration community has been established in Bayonne since 1990, in a building located in the heart of a wooded acre in its southern part, accessible from the avenue Foch located below.
The project had several objectives:
. To come up with a boardroom that could welcome all councilors and the public
. To offer additional workspaces for the different services.
. To fortify the Agglomeration community dynamism through the figure of a contemporary extension.
The defining concept for this house, commissioned by a photographer as both his summer house and studio, was based on developed facade studies which define a simple and smooth building skin varied in height and punctured by openings.
Two volumes define the main living & work spaces, both converge to the North corner freeing up as much space as possible on this small lot and turning all window openings to face South and West. The main space is compressed at the entry and releases up towards the landscape, the fan shaped plan gradually provides more floor area, volume and light. The second volume is exclusively dedicated to the owner’s studio. All rooms and bathrooms are reduced to a bare minimum and provide maximum surface area to living and work spaces.
The project is located in Balagne (Corsica ), now a very popular tourist destination. Buildings nearby compete in both size and amenities, aiming for the top of the market and in a neo-Provençal style that has become the standard for the region.
Occupying a large vacant field plot, a rarity in this area, set between sea and mountains, the two villas occupy only the steep and impracticable edge of the land, in contrast to the modern habit of building on the flattest and most even areas.
This full floor work space was designed for the oldest insurance company in France. A very specific brief had been put together by the client which required to design a “peaceful, see-through & fresh” space that would not only respond to contemporary work practices but also allow new, and at times unexpected, team interactions.
On a tree-lined street in Marly-le-Roi a small community very close to Paris where high fences traditionally isolate each house and its garden, there is a house which reaches out to its neighbors creating a feeling of urbanity previously lacking on these parts. Because urban policy does not allow one house to open up to another to achieve the openness effect, this house is moved forward its parcel to open widely onto the street. A perforated galvanized-steel fence allows the passers-by to look in at the garden, which actually runs under the house that seems to levitate on its plot. It is also an invitation to enter: the access is made from this underground level beneath the actual house, where the firewood is stored and the car parked. The layout of the ground floor is characterized by the fluidity of its three spaces, which are organized around the central fireplace, which alone endures the entire heating of this passive house. The kitchen and an intimate living room are located on either side of the carved staircase of a single piece of prefabricated steel, while two steps higher a living room crossing opens onto a vast terrace with a cantilever onto the street. This house blurs the boundaries between private and public to the benefit of user-friendly rooms that also open onto the outside.
The project involves the conversion of an industrial building dating from the 19th century into 85 units of social housing, and a nursery with space for 40 cribs, as well as a commercial space and a parking garage. The existing building, which has served a series of varied activities – first as a dairy, then for food processing industries, followed by maintenance workshops and a printing business – was built on a trapezius plan around a courtyard covered with an industrial glass roof sheltering delivery docks.
Between city center and boulevard, the gymnasium is part of a global project of urban requalification.
The program imposes the creation of a void where sports activities (sports field and climbing wall) will take place. This vacuum imposed by the sporting uses draws from the outset the volumetric draft of the project which is summed up with a regular parallelepiped implanted along the boulevard. From this constraint, the project seeks to radiate beyond its own physical limits. The urban scale then becomes the means of punctuating the main volume and anchoring it in the site and in the city. It is through urban windows that the building directs, locates, and articulates this new urban project in the city. These windows are voluntarily out of scale, and are expressed by point stretches of the main volume. Focusing on existing urban and landscape events (garden, large Sequoia, crassier), they become a pretext for opening views and favoring natural light. The use of extruded aluminum on the façade contributes to the moderation of the building’s mass by means of changes in color, light, and volume perception.
The project is located on the overall development program of the Bassins à Flots in Bordeaux, whose specifications were drawn up by the ANMA agency (Nicolas Michelin). The group concerned is coordinated by the architecture agency MATEO Arquitectura in Barcelona.
The program totals 145 rooms and combines a series of 9 duplex townhouses. The building exudes about 4452 m2 of floor space and is composed of two different estates oriented South-West / North-Est facing each other on both sides of a large landscaped slab cleared at the 2nd level.
email
Facebook
Twitter
RSS Feed
