Student accommodation

Cergy-Pontoise, France

This project goes beyond the issue of the student room to address the notion of a contextual campus.

Reinventing the ’cell’ makes no sense today. What students want is a computer and an immediate connection to the world. Design is far less important than creating the conditions for sharing and openness to others. An ideal bedroom is not the best solution for turning young people into curious, inventive and sharing citizens. The ideal is outside: a student residence should be a place open to interpretation and appropriation by everyone.

The Cergy site is capable of creating a wide range of possibilities.
Starting with the grid of the car park and shopping centre, we are creating a vast playground based on a free plan derived from the context. The typical room, conforming to all the standards and the traditional tripartite layout (kitchen, bathroom, bed/office), is ordinary but allows for all possible combinations. It will be up to future managers and users to define their own lifestyles: single rooms, double rooms, shared accommodation for two, three, etc. Everything will be possible.

The post-and-slab structural system chosen means that the various floors are completely free and can be reprogrammed in the future.
The toolbox (partitions, façades, etc.) provided will allow modularity and adaptability. The programme’s three units (young workers’ hostel, social residence and private residence) can function separately or together. Like the bedrooms, they can be connected to form a vast urban campus… or not. But they form a whole on the scale of the site.

This balance between functionality, the search for spatial performance, the understanding of a global territory and, at the same time, a well-dosed discrepancy makes this project unique.

Making the extraordinary out of the ordinary: that’s what architecture is all about.

Program
Construction of 210 student housing units for first-time buyers (lot A) + 200 social housing units (lot B) + 130 young workers’ housing units (lot C)

Location
Avenue des Trois-Fontaines
Cergy-Pontoise, France

Schedule
Competition: 2013

Client
Bouygues Immobilier

Project management
Lead architect: Hamonic+Masson & Associés

Cost
20 M€ excl. tax.

Floor Area
17 493 m²