Barrault Pressacco

The territory of Roubaix has developed on a urban fabric made up of large urban blocks. This strcuture is still widely identifiable today. The chosen urban form is not only the one that allows to create the bigger garden, but also the one that engages in dialogue with this scale and firmly anchors the project within its territory. The two hundred apartments lining the block’s edge are organized around a large collective "garden-forest" collective, active and generous. All are dual-aspect, benefiting from privileged conditions of orientation, daylight, and ventilation. Every room receives direct daylight.

Thus, by reconnecting with the tradition of large garden-blocks, the project provides housing with comfort based on simple and robust devices: a large collective garden, dense vegetation, a window in every room, dual orientation, and separable living spaces. Since our aim is to design increasingly ambitious conditions for sustainable comfort, the project’s economy compels us to adopt a process of simplification. The single figure generates multiple situations and produces a wide diversity of types, whose logic stems from their orientation.

The envelope reinvests in the tradition of the double masonry wall, with insulating blocks made of flaxcrete on the inside, and reused bricks on the outside. It is anchored to a structure of exposed concrete columns and slabs within the dwellings.