LAN Architecture Wins Two Competitions for New Residential Areas in France

Paris-based office LAN Architecture began the new year with two competition wins for new residential areas in France: a sustainable and social living space in Bègles and a hybrid model between collective and individual housing in Mouvaux. LAN Architecture was also recently featured in the UpStarts series on our sister site Archinect.

New Residential Project in Bègles, France:

Here more info from LAN Architecture:

A new, sustainable and social living space geared to the 21st century. The project’s richness and major interest lie in the possibility of inventing an urban lifestyle set in a highly experimental framework enabling the affirmation of new ecological and contemporary architectures. The diversity of architectural propositions and communal and private spaces had to ensure and enhance this specificity.

The first stage was to ‘sculpt’ the volumes in order to exploit their urban potential and intrinsic spatial qualities. We directed our research towards a hybrid typology combining the house and the apartment.

The principle underlying our approach was that of stacking containers, and careful study of habitat modes, climatic conditions and the sun’s trajectory throughout the year suggested the way to organise this. The project’s column-slab supporting structure has a system of lightweight façades providing ultra-high performance insulation levels.

The relative narrowness of the buildings dictated a strategic search for compactness. The idea of variable compactness introduced the notion of a housing unit’s adaptability to seasons and times of day. All residents have the possibility of using their exterior space as a windbreak, a mini-greenhouse or, conversely, as a means of cooling or ventilating.

The morphology of each unit stems from the wish to develop housing units enabling a variety of uses very simply and with no extra technological input. We are therefore proposing cross-building units with adaptable exterior spaces and at least two different orientations.

Project Details - Bègles:
Program: Construction of a complex of apartments, shops and business premises
Location: Terres Neuves District, Bègles, France
Date: 2009
Client: Ataraxia, Saemcib
Cost: € 6.5 M ($9.35 M)
Size: 6,500 sqm (70,000 sqft)
Timetable: 2009-2012

New Residential Project in Mouvaux, France:

Here more info from LAN Architecture:

New constructions’ urbanization potential and their capacity to integrate the history and the morphology of the city hosting them constitute the major challenge for new built-up areas.
Our strategy takes into consideration this point and other themes as town houses, cars, definition and hierarchical organization of public and collective spaces as well as environmental quality. They are integrated into the project to produce new sustainable urban models.

Analysis of uses and architecture types composing the urban morphology of Mouvaux quickly led us towards the conception of a hybrid model, an intermediate housing environment able to conjugate desire of intimacy as well as sociability.
This choice is legitimated by the scale of the constructions already composing the district and the city’s fabric. This new intervention must consider this environment.

A new urban typology
The project’s aim is to build new buildings presenting the same qualities and facilities of a single family house by adding collective spaces. We imagined several spatial systems leading to create a rich and diversified image for each program’s part.

We consider the project as an entity, where every single element has its place and a specific role in the general district’s composition. The relation between the container and the content is inverted and the new buildings become tools defining public spaces.

History and identity
Since Middle Age, inhabitants of Mouvaux were essentially dedicated to the textile industry.
The new housing fronts decline patterns based on the geometrical work of the fabric. By observing attentively, it seems evident that the fabric, the “serge” and the satin always existed in the drawings of the brick of the North, and in the different ways they are displayed. 

Project Details - Mouvaux:
Program: Construction of 117 housing units (84 social housing units and 33 private housing units) and retails
Client: ZAC centre ville de Mouvaux
Date: 2009
Client: Nacarat – Groupe G.H.I. – Notre Logis
Cost: € 12,1 M ($17.4 M)
Size: 13,000 sqm (140,000 sqft)
Timetable: 2009 - 2013

Images: LAN Architecture