Description

The Antoine de Saint-Exupéry residential home is situated opposite Paul Brousse Hospital in Villejuif, a southern suburb of Paris. The primary focus of the design is to create a pleasant and friendly living environment for the residents, while optimising working conditions for care staff.

The building is divided along a central axis into two four-storey parts connected by a glazed passage at ground level. Each part comprises five separate volumes with different floor plans connected by glazed passages, treatment rooms and communal spaces. The individual volumes are arranged behind one another as a series of compact, clear volumes with pitched and flat roofs, rotated and shifted to create a playful progression of houses ranging from white-grey to anthracite in colour. By breaking down the overall complex into small-scale volumes, the complex responds to the irregular pattern of the surrounding urban fabric. Instead of looking like a hospital or care home, the ensemble has a human scale that resembles a typical (sub)urban street of shops and apartments.

In the centre of each of the two sections is a main access core with lift and open staircase from which all of the 160 single rooms can be reached. Eight to twelve rooms are arranged around a communal living and dining room as a group. The 23 m² rooms have a barrier-free bathroom and large windows. Residents can bring their own furniture and personal items to personalise their room and help them feel at home. Automatic folding shutters made of the same material as the façade panels serve as sunshades when open and provide privacy and darkness when closed. They can also be individually operated, creating an ever-changing pattern on the façade.

To improve efficiency for staff, all service and care facilities are distributed along the central circulation passage in each block.

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Originally published in: Eckhard Feddersen, Insa Lüdtke, Living for the Elderly: A Design Manual, second and revised edition, Birkhäuser, 2017.