Description

A good half of the 21,000 inhabitants of Lormont, a suburban municipality in northeast Bordeaux, live in the Génicart district. Built between 1960 and 1985, the settlement consists mainly of mass housing blocks with a high proportion of social housing. The Paris-based architects LAN Architecture have now renovated a group of three ageing blocks in the complex to improve their energy efficiency and urban configuration. Originally designed by the architects Jean Fayeton and Francisque Perrier, the three blocks are framed by long rows and corner sections of lower-rise housing which contain a total of 710 apartments, 387 of which are in the towers.

LAN’s concept employs a dual approach of redesigning the public space around the houses, including a large playground in the middle of the block, where cars used to park, and recladding the façades, not just to improve their energy-efficiency but also to give the individual blocks a specific identity. Nowhere does one see the otherwise ubiquitous insulated render systems.

The three high-rise blocks, which in Fayeton and Perrier’s original design had strong horizontal lines, have been given a new envelope of almost square polycarbonate sheets that are held in place by a delicate construction of aluminium supports. In the process, the rather cramped 90 cm deep balconies were widened to 1.60 m. This serves on the one hand as a continuous climatic buffer zone around the building, and on the other gives the residents better and more usable outdoor living space.

Originally published in Bauwelt 19.2017, pp. 40-41, abridged and edited for Building Types online, translated by Julian Reisenberger

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