Social housing changes scale/71 social housing units - Fabien Brissaud - France

In La Courneuve, two buildings and 18 duplex units provide a great diversity of housing. A meticulous architectural style contributes to the regeneration of the Cité des 4000.

Volumetric diversity: The heterogeneity of the blocks provides the cityscape with a multi-faceted "skyline" that avoids monotony and block siting on the streets. The different volumes are located on the site to create a maximum of vistas for the housing units while creating a minimum of blanks, co-visibility between them or with their surroundings.

Typological diversity: The project proposes two clearly identifiable typologies: the "building" and the "superimposed town house". The articulation of these two scales is done through porosities and built continuities up to the site boundaries.

Diversity of use: The project proposes optimum habitable conditions by establishing planting in the block centre that allow for different uses. These are created throughout the shared spaces: bright, spacious glazed halls, a large bicycle room that can be transformed into a meeting space, multiple accesses create a diversity of routes, private gardens and wide decks protected by a brick mashrabiya screen, daylit landings and a large central shared garden.

Variety of materials: The estate is domestic and simple, both in volume and detail. It draws into coherence and resonance three materials and colors: white concrete, brick, and larch. These three materials dialogue with each other and harmonize in the overall reading of the project but also in the details of their execution. The intention was to leave the materials as unrefined as possible for longer durability and better integration within site. In the  blocks of flats, the white concrete underlines the expression of the timber and metal joinery details while on the superimposed houses, the timber cladding underlines the details of the double-height, white volumes. The function of the brick mashrabiya screens, the white metal joinery, and the window joinery provide all the elements with a simple and refined joinery.

The diversity of volumes, architectures, and uses is the underlying principle of the proposal. The project provides multiple readings of the exterior and interior spaces of buildings that facilitate appropriation by its residents. The success of the project will be determined through the use of the shared spaces that are the essential means for community living.

Materials

White concrete, stained larch timber cladding, larch timber joinery, lacquered steel joinery, white cement bricks, galvanized steel ironmongery, light grey cement slab.