This project is not our first wooden structure dwellings building. We have already built a few residency like that before. Le Bourg dwellings project is the latest achievment of our way to build dwellings : we want them to be with a human size, ecological and sustainalbe.
The building takes its inspiration from the street where it takes place (Lebour) to generate an atmosphere like in a village. Montreuil is a city just next tothe East of Paris. Like most of cities there, it was traditionaly a popular city. This past let a "faubourg" ambient in this city which is now mutating. There is houses, low rises building and former workshops there. So the architecture of the new buildings is a witness and actor of this mutation but we also wanted this one to keep and permit to remember the identitiy of this neighbourhood by proposing a reinterpretation of its image allied with a modernity.
Located all around a remarkable and protected garden, the housing melts smoothly in the Montreuil urban grid. The subtle spanning and the use of natural materials contribute to the tranquility and harmony of the place (wood cladding and zinc roof and walls).
A shared garden is taking place in the middle of the plot. It's a place for all people of the community. This garden is open to everyone to cultivate vegetables, make grow flowers, meet each other, play together for the children. It's a nice quiet and green area shared by all living there.
The wood frame construction ensures thermal comfort and enhances well-being. It is also a good way to minimize disturbances due to the works (less noise, less waste, less truck move etc.) The habitat assumes the characteristics that make the quality of a place of life: large bow windows to ensure natural light in the majority of the rooms, privative outdoor spaces and large shared garden.
This project is a good example of a sustainable building, from the conception to completion and during all the steps of the studies and works. The purpose was always to create a respectful project for the nature and a nice, warm and pleasant place for living.
Technical facts
Client : REI
Architects : archi5
Program : Construction of 32 logements and retail space.
Wooden structure, environmental design.
Adress : Lebour street, Montreuil, France
Surface : 1 952 m ²
Cost : 4 100 000 Euros Excl. Tax.
Timetable : Completion may 2017
Landscape designer : Coloco
Photographer : Sergio Grazia
Montreuil
France
REI Habitat
05/12
1952 mq
archi5
archi5 / Coloco /
Curriculum
archi5 was founded in 2003, the fruit of its founders’ common agency experience and the approach they share to architecture.
A context-based approach to projects is key : the site, the programme, the social and cultural challenges are all examined, analyzed and compared. These data are then transformed into questions.
The projects offer a dynamic and comprehensive response to those issues to the highest standard that has come to be archi5’s trademark.
This approach is visible, legible in every building. It confers meaning and form and is perceptible in the projects’ applications, spaces and environmental impact. It is the essence of our confidence in architecture, its capacity to enhance humankinds’ environment.
We propose an interpretation of a form of architecture that is sensitive to the challenges it deals with, mindful of those who will live with and in it, ambitious in its convictions.