Jardin Habité
107 Collective Housing Units

Project description

On a former market gardening plot, the creation of an urban village with 107 housing units, integrated with greenery. In the heart of the Bordeaux metropolitan area, just a few steps from a tram stop, the project pays tribute to Bègles’ agricultural past and offers a living environment in harmony with nature.

The project site is the last agricultural wasteland in the Biranbits market gardening district, just a stone’s throw from the Mussonville metropolitan natural park. The square boundaries of the old greenhouses, some rows of fruit trees, vegetable plantings, and a sealed well are still visible. It was clear to us that the challenge of this development project was to preserve the “countryside in the city” atmosphere.
Thus, we had to invent a new way of living in the city, in harmony with nature, just a few minutes from a tram stop and, therefore, connected to the heart of the metropolis.

The design strategy involved first creating open spaces consisting of meticulously designed shared and private gardens, and then placing the built structures: four U-shaped residential buildings directly linked to the gardens.
The landscape of these spaces consists of plant layers of varying scales, combining lawns, planted beds, and small copse trees, poetically evoking the site’s agricultural past.
It is truly nature that infiltrates the inhabited fabric. The plant layers create intimate spaces for ground-floor private gardens and loggias on the upper floors. On the rooftops, garden terraces offer distant views towards the Mussonville park. Cars are invisible on the site. The 123 parking spaces are located in an underground parking garage, buried 0.5 to 1.50 meters below the level of the soil.

The market gardening imagery guided the choice of a contemporary aesthetic shaped by traditional materials.
The market gardening imagery evokes the idea of the countryside, nature, working the land, villages, and rural landscapes… With this in mind, we shaped the inhabited volumes using red “hand-molded” bricks on the exterior, and beige bricks in the tree-lined courtyards to capture the light. Like embroidery, the brick pattern creates vertical and horizontal grids, within which the aluminum window frames are integrated, fitted with black metal folding sliding shutters. The richness of this pattern becomes apparent as one approaches the buildings. On the courtyard side, the double glass/brick skin subtly marks the vertical circulation paths.

Break the density through varied volumetric work.
Our goal was to integrate the built density while minimizing its perception. The 107 housing units are spread across four buildings with two stories (R+2), each composed of three volumes, allowing for the rhythm of the town house layout to be found.
This refined volumetry is enriched by the interplay of the roofs—sometimes an inhabited attic parallel to the façades, sometimes a private rooftop terrace, and sometimes perpendicular to the façades, offering double-height living rooms and a usable space above the bedrooms.

The objective was to combine the desire for privacy with the pleasure of sociability. The fragmentation of volumes and the multiplicity of volumetric perceptions of the buildings create surprises and unexpected spatial situations, making the living experience pleasant, varied, and unique for each resident.
The richness of the volumetric system and its arrangement also allows for a great typological diversity, with 12 atypical T4 duplex apartments inhabiting the attic volume and opening onto a large terrace-garden nestled between the roofs, and 12 adaptable T3 apartments thanks to a double-height living room and the addition of a usable volume above the sleeping areas, offering the possibility for future conversion into T4 units.