What shall we do about “GRANDS ensembles?” — The Génicart district is located near the centre of Lormont and is close to the town’s main urban and interurban roads. Its estate covers 10% of the commune of Lormont’s surface area and is the largest housing estate on the right bank of the Gironde. Consisting primarily of collective and social housing, it houses some 10,500 people and 50% of Lormont’s population. An ambitious urban and social renovation project is now underway. Our architectural intervention concerns access to the buildings, their entrance halls and the transformation of their facades, and involves a sustainable approach to energy economy and environmental quality. It combines two different but entirely complementary approaches.

Rehabilitation and identification — Each residential group is reconfigured into an identifiable entity. The areas at the foot of the buildings are reserved for residents (access gangways). Sloping communal areas in the middle of the plots, at present overgrown with vegetation, are protected, reorganised and improved. The reworking of the buildings’ exteriors (facades and base) will provide a new and distinct architecture for each housing group.

More open and better equipped communal spaces creating a genuine urban park within the estate — The parking areas are entirely redesigned, rationalised and concentrated around the estate’s edges. Vehicle access within the estate’s South sector is limited to deliveries and emergency services. Each of these spaces will be individually redesigned to create a network of landmarks, pedestrian intersections and meeting places between housing groups. These more structured and identifiable elements will contrast with areas of luxuriant and diverse greenery, enhanced with new plantations.

Client: Domofrance / Cost: € 21.3M excl. VAT / Surface: 57223 m² / Schedule: 2009 – 2015 / Team: Franck Boutté (HEQ), Base (Landscape), Beterem Ingénierie (All trades engineering)