After the fashion of the general conversion of the Nantes block, our architecture exploits the special elements of its environment and draws its beauty from the reinterpretation of these. Set in an ideal location, the building becomes a marker for a place to meet. The great strength of the program and of its articulation resides in the duality which exists between the telluric plinth, a monolith on a pedestrian scale, dedicated to the shops and intermediary housing and the community accommodation which rises up out of this block, becoming almost aerial. It loses its shape and undulates in order to delineate the different functions of the program, making them recognizable. Resolutely grounded, linked to the land and blended into the region, it is the link between housing, the city and its users. The community building is a slender volume rising towards the sky where it culminates in a point, a steady prow, proving to be simple but strong. Echoing the urban thread, the facade receives a skin like surface, an almost living moucharaby or lattice work, alternating between solid, void and the movement of the shutters as they are opened and closed.
Context :
Ile de Nantes : Nantes Island in the pays de Loire region, it’s in the ZAC « Prairie aux Ducs » first designed by Alexandre Chemetoff (urban Planner) and has been taken up by Anne Mie Depuydt & Marcel Smets (uapS & Smets) since 2011. The planning authority is the SAMOA for Nantes City Island.
The project is along the Loire Bank, between the “hangar aux machines” that inhabitates the giant mechanical elephant and Dragon, and the “hangar à Bananes” (banana warehouse). It’s Also next to the “Caroussel des mondes Marins”.
Ground floor :
_ individual houses (level 0&1)
_ commercial space : restaurant
_ car park, lobby, and building services.
Number of storeys : ground + 9 = 10
Level 9&10 : duplex
Materials :
_ concrete for structure
_ precast concrete for balconies ( no paint , left gross – clean)
_ wood for ground level skin
_ steel for upper levels grid
Tower :
_ alucobon for plain parts
_ perforated aluminum for mobil and fixed moucharabi parts.
