The seniors of the Bastide
At the main entrance to Montauban, a modern-day bastide
has recently welcomed the hundred residents of a nursing
home. Treated as a landscaped esplanade, the parking
lot presents the facility like a manor offering visitors and
residents a main courtyard to which the welcoming arcades
girdling it give the reassuring appearance, although urban, of
a village square.
Economically and functionally measured, the strippeddown
volumetry (in prefabricated insulated concrete
walls with integrated formwork) of the first three housing
and service levels has three southern façades that are
enlivened on the upper floors by an elegant longitudinal
screen behind which are shaded sitting rooms, exterior
emergency staircases and a smoking room.