At the heart of an urban development zone, the Séqué programme has to face the challenge of dense architecture in a natural setting, and meets three demands: the respectful exploitation of a woodland area, the renewal of social housing and high environmental performances. Narrow and irregular, the 5000 m² plot alternates between lines of poplars and woodland areas turning the project into a study between dense space and the suppleness of a design which interweaves cabins and timber. The project, comprising 50 housing placements arranged along tree-like structures on stilts, puts three elements at the centre of its concerns: the importance of sunlight, of privacy and of the inhabitants’ sense of belonging. The work on deconstructed entities preserves the site’s hills and greenery and traces different pathways which allow us to see the complex fusion between the buildings and the trees.
The walkways between the buildings create a new sequence of perspectives which brings to the fore this impression of structured chaos. In this way, the architecture differentiates the road level (reserved for parking, for the walkway and for recreation) from that of the accommodation, which brushes against the green foliage and is bathed in light and not overlooked by any other building. The gaps between the structures determined by this layout are both rhythmic and easily understandable, and allow the whole plot to breathe. Erected in wood, steel and masonry, the housing is conceived to limit any impact on the environment. In this way, the path of the sun and weather conditions have been integrated into the programme, as have domestic functions, giving the housing access to BBC certification.
The southern facades widen to become a technical and living interface which preserves the inhabitants’ privacy and safeguards the landscape from human interference. External insulation, plant structures, canopies and brise-soleil guarantee the heat performance of the buildings whilst the standardization of the main elements limited the building costs. This composition of cabins plays on vertical rhythms and on the lightness of the structures to echo the leaves of the poplars. The relationships between the architecture, man and nature are thus those of reciprocation, interaction and belonging.
