Oct
'10
Consultation on the construction of four apartment buildings and the landscaping of a park on the site of the Andromède mixed-use development.
First prize awarded in 2010
The Andromède neighbourhood. Organization of the block
<<Andromède: the new neighbourhood being developed in a sequence between the Aéroconstellation and the river Garonne.
Our idea is to mark the start of this sequence opposite a park, the Cours Pinot, close to the main approach road, Avenue Andromède.
The first plan is broken down into three volumes. The two volumes forming a corner respect the building line of the street and the central volume acts as a filter.
The second plan, lower and architecturally more delicate, with wooden cladding, gently encloses the whole.
At the centre, the garden, thickly planted with trees, recalls the undeveloped space beyond, the banks of the Garonne.
The apartments exploit the conditions of their context: open to the south, turning their backs to the north and exploiting the terraces and gardens to enjoy the meeting with nature provided by the new neighbourhood.
An interplay of contrasts is introduced between the materiality of the wooden-clad base and the more solid, brick-built bases.
The three initial buildings are clad with tiles in a reference to the local historical archetype, given a modern, conceptual treatment.
The building on Avenue Andromède comprises 80% black elements and 20% white. Dark as the urban asphalt of the boundary it constitutes.
On the central plot, the proportion is inverted (80% white and 20% black) in a tendency to a shiny white that reflects the vegetation in the garden.
The third volume on Rue Jacqueline Auriol is grey (50% black, 50% white).
The resulting volumes will be lightweight, perceived not as a continuity of colour but as clouds of pixels, a collection of dots that form a volume>>.
Josep Lluís Mateo
A landscape approach
The garden exploits the elongated form of the plot to offer different routes through the centre of the block. The lengthwise route establishes a transition from the urban to nature. After Avenue Andromède, a garden is glimpsed, then a porch. The transition in public space is progressive, starting with mineral ground that gives way to beds planted with German iris, then more thickly populated by shrubby Lonicera nitida. As we move deeper into the garden, the vegetation becomes more dense. Stands of birch trees planted in the open ground are sufficiently transparent not to block views of the Cours Pinot. A central space is consolidated and left free as a boules green. The filter between the garden and the Cours Pinot takes the form of a mass of Virginia creepers and variegated ivy that will change with the seasons: thicker and more colourful in summer, more transparent and green in winter. In the birch wood, a children’s playground is protected from the outside. The filter between the terraces and the garden comprises clematis that clings to the terrace divisions. Two paths run crosswise from Rue Max Fischl to the Cours Pinot. These paths range across the garden by means of wooden slats, like lightweight footbridges floating over a flowerbed.
The dwellings
Building A is laid out around two vertical shafts, generating apartments which, in all cases, have a twofold orientation.
Recessed loggias turn to face either west (the Cours Pinot) or south (the garden at the block’s centre).
Building B acts as a filter between the centre of the block and the Cours Pinot. As in Avenue Andromède, all the apartments face two directions.
South-facing terraces are created, offering vistas of both the garden and the park.
The apartments in building C overlook the park and face south, with a volume that fans out to create south-facing terraces.
Building D is laid out on three levels. On the ground floor, all the apartments are cross-ventilated and have a terrace that is an extension of the living room. By alternating a series of one- and two-floor apartments and inverting these typologies on the other floors, an entire level (1st floor) is left free of distribution. This principle of compactness responds to the demands of low energy consumption.
The complex as a whole seeks to create a wide variety of typologies and orientations, on each floor and in each type of building, and extend the exterior as a living space.
Author: Josep Lluís Mateo
Client: KAUFMAN & BROAD
Competition: 2010
Surface: 8230 m2
