Néaucité Saint-Denis

Saint-Denis, France

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Néaucité Saint-Denis

Saint-Denis, France

Firm

Atelier Krauss Architecture

Type

Residential › Multi Unit Housing

STATUS

Built

YEAR

2017

SIZE

25,000 sqft - 100,000 sqft

BUDGET

$1M - 5M

Photos

Frédéric Delangle (21), Atelier Krauss Architecture (9)

44 social housing units and stores
Location and program:
The project is located at the entrance of the Zac Alstom Confluence in Saint-Denis city.
It is a triangular plot bordered by 3 streets and a public garden. The site benefits from a unique corner situation which marks the entrance of the new district and participates in the definition of the "Skyline" on the main street.
The program offers 44 units of social housing. These functional and luminous apartments are dis-tributed by two distinct stair-cases and have different typologies and surfaces.

The urban fault:
From the atypical geometry of the site flows an L-shaped volume, inevitably inducing a zone of inoperative shadow in the North.
We react to this constraint by creating a North-South fault. This gesture has several advantages for us:
- Allows the light of the South to the heart of the plot.
- Open views of the garden of the Avant-Scène and the terrace planted in R + 1.
- Detach a built-up volume garden side of a more domestic scale, which is more like a pavilion.

inhabited roof garden:
The project participates in the design of the new landscape under construction and develops an architecture of roofs. The slopes have been carefully designed to offer a pleasant and aesthetic silhouette. At the heart of this large roof, we offer a common terrace on the top floor with panoram-ic views of the distant landscape.

The set of facades:
The project offers two expressions of different facades reacting to their immediate urban context:
- An «urban» facade that follows the boundaries the three main streets.
- A façade of «hanging gardens» in the heart of the plot dialogue with the Avant-Scène garden.
The «urban» facade holds the building on three angles.
It develops a remarkable metallic drape, alternating full and empty spaces, transparency and opac-ity.
Its dynamic rhythm participates in the perpetual movement of the city, playing on a vocabulary of loggias and big scale perforations.
In addition, we choose to treat a façade of «hanging gardens» in the heart of the plot, creating sur-prise and astonishment for the pedestrian.
Totally oriented towards the garden, it proposes a calm and timeless writing.

The prow, a remarkable element in the landscape:
We intend to highlight the prow of the building by making it visible and identifiable from the par-vis of the train station. The movement of slender roofs as well as the large loggias of the South fa-cade give a strong signal.

Housing units:
The project presents a compact and rational organization of housing units, led by a reflection on the themes of privet live, sharing, and flexibility. It aimes a space appropriation by the inhabit-ants.
The private outdoor spaces of each dwelling are developed towards the west, and benefit from an optimal orientation of sunshine and a clear view of the garden.
A regular grid allows the planning of duel aspect apartments of type T2 and T3 in the center of the building, as the edges are occupied by large apartments of type T4 and T5.
This allows those units to benefit from a triple orientation and an angle loggias offering clear views.