ZAC EuroNantes

Nantes, France

Our first feeling was this project had to be anchored in something telluric, something geological. The building fits into the earth, into the substratum.

Architecture, whether it likes it or not, is summoned to the question of travel. We are looking here at a territorial identity in all its complexity, in all its paradoxes, in all its depth, nourished by contexts and circumstances. Living there will be different.

We have to respect the poetry of this place and participate in its mutation. That’s why we’re proposing a piece of the landscape. No colours, no pictorial chatter, just thickness and lightness. Working here on the raw material of architecture, the ground, the light, the view, the sky.

Playing on superimposition, reflection and mineral, this architecture blurs the tangible limits of the building in a poetic accompaniment to the landscape. In this project, this idea is expressed through a position of tension between the site and the building. A relationship that creates strong emotion. This relationship finds its formal expression in a gradual ascent. The building mutates and transforms as it makes its way from the earth to the sky. Made of mass-coloured concrete, the base acts as an interface, a transition between the natural ground and the building. A natural extension of the banks of the Loire, our building embraces the surrounding biodiversity in a biotopic continuity symbolised and staged by the collective practices and sharing that take place there. This choice to accompany the riverbank walk in our building is dictated by the strong desire to start the building by anchoring it in the ground and in the public space.

The higher the building rises, the more its mineral materiality fades in favour of glazed elements, entering into a symbiosis with the air, the wind, the elements of lightness, an ethereal character symbolising this quest for ascent. From heavy to light, from opaque to transparent, from earth to sky. This is how this upward journey is constructed. A symbol of the landscape that makes up this place, our building will be perceived not as an additional piece of architecture but as a piece of landscape, a guardian of the banks and a link between the two shores. The boundaries become blurred, the landscape and the building resonate with each other.

In the end, we’re more concerned with the landscape and global perception than with demonstration. It’s this balance between functionality, the pursuit of spatial performance and, at the same time, the right amount of discrepancy that makes this project unique. That’s where architecture comes in.

Program
Construction of 68 housing units for first-time buyers + 12 social housing units

Location
ZAC EuroNantes, îlot 9
Nantes, France

Schedule
Competition: 2012

Client
Bouygues Immobilier

Project management
Lead architect: Hamonic+Masson & Associés

Floor Area
5 446 m²