How to approach designing a building offering 56 homes that also creates a balanced urban dynamic in an area undergoing a profound transformation? How to reclaim the river banks, open up a neighbourhood cut off by the canal and the ring road? How to imagine an architectural concept which looks towards the architecture of the future that is yet to be invented and to the surrounding natural environment intended to grow and develop?
These are the ambitions of the Cap Canal project, for which the architects at the Rue Royal practice drew inspiration from the duality which so often characterises these buildings: the duality of materials, initially the most obvious contrast, as well as that of the north and south aspects of the building, of the interplay between the built and the unbuilt, of matte and shiny finishes and of the staggered volumes etc.
This inspiration serves a commitment to providing increasingly high quality social housing, adopting a demanding and complex approach to increase space, light, privacy, view and comfort.
In the Saint-Jean neighbourhood of Villeurbanne, which rubs shoulders with the town of Vaulx-en-Velin, this flagship project stands as a silent manifesto.