Collective housing in an urban environment - student projects

On sites located in the Paris region, mainly in the inner suburbs, several groups of students were invited to design a housing complex of 30 to 50 units. While most of the projects involved new construction and the creation of an urban fabric, some groups worked on the rehabilitation and transformation of existing buildings, questioning the value of use, the memory of places and the capacity of housing to renew itself within inherited structures. In all cases, the project explores the multiple dimensions – spatial, constructive, social and urban – on which housing is based. The semester thus articulates an architectural culture and design tools mobilized at several scales, from analysis to design.

COMPOSITION OF THE EXHIBITION

The works on display in the atrium – hand and computer drawings, plans, sections, elevations, axonometrics, perspectives, diagrams and sketches in scales from 1:50 to 1:500 – testify to a core competence of the semester: conceiving housing as an active component of the city. Beyond the diversity of sites, programs and architectural approaches, the projects share a common responsibility: to think of housing not as an isolated object, but as a fragment of the urban fabric that contributes to shaping public spaces, shared uses and ways of living together in the metropolis.

TARGET SKILLS

Students learn to situate their project by reading the urban context (roads, plots, typology, landscape), to organize the entrance sequence and the public-private relationship, and to articulate the housing / building / urban scales; to dimension living spaces and built thicknesses, by measuring voids as well as full spaces; distributing access and assembling dwellings, seeking typological diversity and the quality of communal spaces; building in coherence with the structure (direction of span, grid, stairway), envelope (facades, roofs) and inside-outside relationships; and representing the project according to different scales and projections, both by hand and by computer.

SPECIFIC KNOWLEDGE MOBILIZED

The project draws on a body of knowledge related to collective housing: the context and organization of urban fabrics, housing typologies (history and theories), construction typologies, distribution systems, as well as uses and lifestyles approached through the sociology of housing. These contributions feed into the design process and form the basis of a reflective approach to contemporary housing.

TEACHERS

AFANASSIEFF Damien, BALDE Delphine, BELIN Perrine, BOTINEAU Marc, BOURLIS Stéphanie, BOURSIER Romain, CHABASON Léonor, CHEDEMOIS Angélique, CREMONINI Pietro, ELEFTERIOU Thomas, FEVRIER Nicolas, FLORET Eugénie, GABBARDO Denis, GOLDSCHMIDT Thomas, LAUZANNE Philippe, LE NORMENT Quentin, MAHE Stéphanie, MARIN Jérôme, MONGIN Lucas, NUSSAUME Yann, POMMIER Juliette, QUANCARD Camille, ROBIC Edouard, SAUBOT Antoine.

Exhibition open Monday to Friday, 10am to 7pm, Saturday 10am to 6pm, except Friday May 8 (Victory Day 1945) and Thursday May 14 (Ascension Day). Admission free.