A simple but essential question guides the conception of Tolbiac: what is housing? Housing should elevate the individual to the rank of inhabitant of the world, install a home and in the city, connect to yesterday and tomorrow, let us contemplate the near and distant elsewhere, structure our views, let us touch the mineral and the woody, the light and the dark, be caressing and rough, clear and blurred, welcoming like a hotel and simple like a shelter, make us big and small at the same time.
A good housing
building would know how to calm the
metropolitan agitation without
extinguishing it, how to make a
private salon and a public place,
how to be both a hut and a palace,
how to cultivate the good life and
let the weeds grow, how to watch
over the sleep of the inhabitant and
make the passer-by dream. Without
ignoring the functional dimensions
of architecture, the Tolbiac project
attempts to take housing towards the
multiple forms of living, by
exploring the expressiveness of
materials, the potential of common
spaces, the openings of the
landscape and the arrangement of
typologies, the relationship to the
place and its history.
Urban facade
The site occupies
a doubly strategic position, at the
corner of two streets separated by a
difference in level of nearly seven
meters. The staircase historically
linking the two streets borders the
site of the operation, formed by the
joining of two parcels. Craft
workshops and warehouses built from
the 1920s to the 1960s are replaced
by a mixed operation with 3000 m² of
commercial space and 5000 m² of
housing. The distribution of the
commercial surfaces between the
first floors of the two streets
minimizes the impact of the activity,
which gives a base to the housing
that spreads out from the first
floor on the rue du Chevaleret. The
88 apartments are divided between
four blocks, three of which are
joined by common spaces and an
independent block on the ground
floor. The grid of balconies unifies
the three parts of the project
rising to first floor + 6 and first
floor + 8. It reconstitutes the
continuous fabric of the Parisian
street.
A
mixed wood and concrete project
The duality of
wood and concrete guides the design
of the project. The mechanical
qualities of concrete, its
resistance to fire and its acoustic
attenuation capabilities led to its
use in the structure. Larch wood is
used as cladding on all surfaces,
while the structures of the
wood-frame walls and the vertical
uprights of the facade are made of
Douglas fir. The visible wood
elements acquire a dark color by
autoclave treatment, evoking the
facades of the old warehouses of
industrial Paris. The tactile
qualities of the material as well as
its visual qualities are highlighted.
Solid wood was preferred to glued
laminated wood for the posts of the
facade, with the intention of
enhancing the qualities of the
material, developing an
architectural aspect reminiscent of
the natural origin of this element,
breaking with the products
reconstituted by gluing usually used
in wood construction. Glued
laminated elements are used very
occasionally for the creation of
curved beams carrying common spaces.
Metal is used for the railings, with
a gunmetal finish that integrates it
into the whole.
Technial Data Sheet
Surface
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October 25, 2022 |