Located on the southeast edge of the Université de Nanterre, opposite the exit from the RER suburban train station, the library stands on an a typical triangular plot of land of rather modest dimension when compared with the size of the campus and the neighboring landscape of office and apartment towers.
On the east façade, the main part of the program runs alongside the university, coming to an end on the south side with the great window of the exhibition areas. The grand entrance porch stands on the south side, overlooking the mall, on the smaller side of the building. It serves as the base for the prism that dominates all the building’s volumes. The programs are dense and superimposed on this challenging plot: a reading room on the ground floor, exhibitions and training rooms on the second floor, and offices on the two upper floors.
International design and innovation office CRA-Carlo Ratti Associati and Bouygues Immobilier have unveiled the design of ILOW, a new building in Paris that aims to act as a bridge between La Défense, the French capital’s financial powerhouse, and the nearby Tours Nuages (Cloud Towers), one of the most iconic social housing projects of the postwar era. The building, designed in collaboration with Agence d’Architecture Willerval et Associés, is shaped like two open arms connecting two different socio-economic neighborhoods. Moreover, it leverages parametric design to generate a facade that reinterprets the Tours Nuages. CRA has filed building permits to the local municipal authority.
CRA Team: Carlo Ratti, Andrea Cassi (Project manager), Anna Morani,Mario Daudo, Matteo Zerbi, Alberto Benetti, Andrea Fasolo, Valentina Grasso,Federico Riches, Oliver Kazimir, Galla Vallée
CRA Graphic Team: Gary di Silvio, Pasquale Milieri, Gianluca Zimbard
Associate Project Management: Agence d’Architecture Willerval et Associés
Research Coordinator: Auris
Structural and Façade Engineering: VP & Green Engineering
The reopening of the site of the Seine Paper Mills is a historic event for Nanterre, due to its size – a plot of over 17 hectares with a single tenant – its place in the memory of the town, its unique location on the banks of the river, the quality of access offered, and its proximity to one of the loveliest parks developed on the banks of the Seine in the last few years. From all points of view, the site is a rare resource.
The Nanterre Arboretum, built for BNP Paribas Real Estate and Woodeum, designed by the François Leclercq and laisné roussel architecture firms, provides a new way of working and conducting business. Firmly focused on environmental quality and integration of new ways of working, the Arboretum will be the largest project ever built from solid wood, worldwide. Construction for this project is set to start in 2018, with the objective of transforming an industrial wasteland into a 136,000 m² campus set in 9 hectares of parkland next to the Seine. The project as a whole is also the largest services sector project under development in Île-de-France.
The project is part of Seine-Arche development which concerns a wider territory in line with the axis of Defense. Taking into account the natural relief and coexistence of various networks which pass through, the Seine-Arche development required the upstream of colossal structures. Aiming to attract here new populations from all over the department of Hauts-de-Seine, the urban project was designed to restore the site scale and its habitability, through a series of seventeen \”Urban Terraces\”. The new buildings offer an architecture that is both monumental, in response to the scale of the site and which expresses the domestic nature of the programs. By his design, details and the choice of the materials, the project provides opportunities for the quality of living and the sustainability of the buildings. Even if the planned allocation for the Terrace 9 is divided into several programs, the whole ensures a single coherent expression. Our goal was to work accurately for functional quality and comfort of the housing program distributed between the three towers and the base. Accommodations are of varied types, ranging from studios to T5, in accession or in social housing. The facades are exposed respectively to the four cardinal points, they are all provided with numerous openings that extend the inside of housings to cascades of terraces, or to small hollowed loggias, which are interposed in the design of the frame.
The Hoche ecodistrict is rising from the ground on old industrial sites. It has to mediate between the scale of the Chemin-de-l’Ile park and the A14 motorway that cuts through it, and the far smaller scale of an area of detached houses dating back to the 1930s. The two plots selected for the development are a good illustration of the challenge. The housing is divided into housing blocks that are look onto public space and face the eight-storey towers between them and the motorway and a square, but in the centre of the block are houses of the same dimensions as the existing detached houses.
The architectural takes suggestions specifications and urban landscaping and wishes of a vertical fragmentation increased, and a breakdown in “skyline” of volumes. Thus we find:
The school is distinguished by its spatial organization and design of the facades of their surroundings. The free form differentiates the building from its environment of rigid social housing characterizing the area ‘Province de France’ in Nanterre. There is a relationship point of view (a view relation) with the Paris business district La Défense. The highly frequented, Route Nationale 314 runs west to the school building. The site was excavated and earth mound planted.
The school is distinguished by its spatial organization and design of the facades of their surroundings. The free form differentiates the building from its environnement of rigid social housing characterizing the area ‘Province de France’ in Nanterre. There is a relationship point of view (a view relation) with the Paris business district La Défense. The highly frequented, Route Nationale 314 runs west to the school building. The site was excavated and earth mound planted.
Night View (Images Courtesy DFA and David Boureau)
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