The Villa Eugénie is located on a long plot of land at the corner of two streets, rue Dombasle and avenue Sainte Eugénie, a cul-de-sac.
Particularly respectful of its environment, both in terms of its form and the materials used, our project for 42 homeownership housing units is comprised of two sections, namely the stone and glass corner, and a series of ateliers on a small, paved street.
Stone and glass
Backing onto the existing building on 34, rue Dombasle, the project is a six storey structure located at the corner of two streets which mirrors the design of the neighbouring building, without the seventh floor. The building’s lower section is made up of grey stone panels. The street-facing façade of the neighbouring school building aligns exactly with the rear of the new structure. The narrow, slender western façade thus serves as the figurehead for this corner of the plot. Occupying the corner of the built volume, it is the same height as the buildings along rue Dombasle. On the west side, the corner’s façade is glazed from top to bottom. The façade is composed of randomly distributed panels, and provides external spaces along its entire width. Large non-abutting sliding panels extending from floor to floor provide this side of the edifice with graceful proportions. This system of fixed and sliding, opalescent and transparent glass panels gives the narrowest of the corner façades a sophisticated evanescence.
On the north side, the six storey façade overlooking the street features a number of vertical, cream white limestone panels covering a single storey – some of them fixed, others sliding. Identical to one another, they form an untreated façade. The joinery is in anthracite grey aluminium on the outside, while the guardrails express the same vocabulary as the ones on the glass corner units, or, in other words, the glazed surfaces range in tone from opalescent to transparent.
The composition of the panels, bay windows, and balconies is synchronised, both horizontally and vertically, with that of the neighbouring façade, and the width of the three associated panels is equal to that of the columns defined by the large windows of the neighbouring building. Thus, by echoing its design and materials, the new façade mirrors the composition of the general façade of the plot on rue Dombasle.
Workshops on the paved street
The interior volume described above descends first by one, then by two floors to form a six-storey, and then a four-storey building on the narrow avenue Sainte Eugénie. The avenue is overlooked by a series of generous windows arranged at irregular heights. The joinery on the outside is in aluminium, and there is a transparent, glazed guardrail. Set back from the cul-de-sac, the volume reveals a space hosting a row of workshops along the entire length of the street. This atelier-style approach to the narrow, paved avenue Saint Eugénie cul-de-sac, reflects traditional faubourg architecture. Its regular, frame support structure features large windows, providing both light and visibility. The workshops feature a row of columns in the form of dark grey posts which, coupled with light grey sheet metal on the façade, evokes an industrial typology.
Protected by glazed screen windows and awnings with aluminium slats, four columns of balconies create an effective barrier with the narrow alleyway they overlook. The thermos-lacquered metal slats of the balconies’ guardrail reflect the horizontal ribbed sheet metal grids protecting the façade’s bay windows on the ground floor. The exterior joinery is in grey lacquered aluminium.
One part of the roof is a private terrace decked with paving slabs, while the other is planted, elegantly integrating the openings of the vertical circulations and the duckboard benches obscuring the piping from view.
Since the workshops are entirely glazed, a view of life in the city at nightfall is guaranteed by the light from the residential units, which illuminate the entire façade.
