Lambert Lénack . SOA . TER

30 APPARTMENTS . LE VÉSINET

Lambert Lénack architectes urbanistes . SOA . AGENCE TER (LANDSCAPE)

We sought an unknown beauty, found in the encounter with a particular place. This is a housing project, in the park of the historic hospital of the city of Le Vésinet.

Our design addresses the challenges of the garden city: building with the landscape and main- taining the hospital as the major piece of the composition. We designed buildings with minimal floor space, like large villas, with low heights that allow them to fit within the heights of the trees. The buildings cohabit with those of another architectural studio, SOA, in a naturalist composition deduced from the preservation of century-old trees. The color of the architecture, like a light earth tone, dialogues with the color of the stone of the hospital, a mineral color, silent in the landscape.

Each of the buildings we designed deviates from the trees : one bends in the shape of a trapezoid, the other organizes its floors in a corbel to limit its use of the ground and the third folds itself. The folded building is surrounded by long balconies wider at the angles and the other two have loggias at the four angles. The square plan organizes two or three apartments per level and draws radiating rooms – for buildings with loggias – three rooms meet at the angles: kitchen and living room, or two bedrooms, meet around the loggia.

Le Vésinet brings together an eclectic heritage of architecture, where all times have created original pieces, like “folies”. The new buildings embody this same value of freedom for each architect and each architecture. The architecture here is mineral, ordered, punctuated vertically by piles and horizontally by bands which draw a singular ornamental character for each building. It creates a protective layer for the exterior spaces : the piers or spandrels organize horizontal or vertical frames of the landscape. Large, full-height wooden joinery are integrated between the elements of construction.

The design allows the facades to be built entirely with prefabricated elements to limit the impact of construction on the site and control the use of materials. The details of the architecture have been designed to integrate the path of water into the elements of construction; drains are integrated in the prefabricated sandblasted concrete pieces of the facades without using additional elements. This research tends to express a form of abstraction, which gives nobility to the geometry and ensures the sustainability of buildings where construction and architecture are one.
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