TEXT_The project for refurbishing the Borderouge-Place Nord district appears ambitious. The essential challenge is to develop a new district which is attractive and dynamic and which is also a pleasant place to live.
The focus of the project is the Place Nord, which seeks to be a point of interaction and synergy for the entire ZAC.
Two further drivers behind the project are the search for architectural quality and an active interest in sustainable development. The dialogue between built and green spaces seeks to meet these ends.
Seeing our project as part of the continuity of this dialogue we have remodelled the layout developed in the urban masterplan. This proposed, on the one hand, the implantation of three small multi-family residential buildings and, on the other, a series of housing terraces. We preferred to combine the two typologies into a single approach.
Our project is defined by three apartment blocks composed of transverse living rooms and individual accesses: three buildings inserted in the park.
These three buildings – which are similar without being identical - establish a dialogue and create a unique project, a search for simplicity appropriate to a programme which seeks to minimise intervention as a means of controlling costs.
Hence, the three entities are determined by their implantation. Oriented to the South, they can benefit from the advantages of the sun without suffering from the associated disadvantages, the brise-soleils and the linear balconies making it possible to use this orientation to enhance the quality of the apartments.
Furthermore, our buildings are organised in line with a grid which makes it possible to flexibly divide and modulate the apartments. They are also designed to be adaptable in the face of future trends – particularly regarding sustainable development and renewable energy.
Finally, we wanted to place central importance on the external and planted spaces. The garden that we have created is defined as a park which acts in continuity with the landscaping project of the Zac.
