Maison Corail consists of 6 floors, including a double attic (duplex) and a single basement level. The building offers 58 housing units, from 4 to 6 room flats (kitchen counted as a room). The ground floor and the first floor are dedicated to commercial activities.
The façade on the road front is entirely glazed, exposing the living rooms to the outside giving the impression that the building has been cut or like section in a doll house.
The clients specifically asked for a building without balconies, the most suited solution capable to give an impression of the exterior was to have sizable sliding windows offering the possibility to open large sections of the façade. In the courtyard, each room is indicated by a window perforated in a roughcast wall with exterior insulation.
The internal organization of the flats has been developed as typological system, which puts the hall in the center of the plan, allowing it to distribute all the rooms. The volume of the attic is designed as an object on a pedestal; its aluminium materialization tends to blend in with the sky.
The structural system was sized not only to ensure stability of the building - including all seismic measurements - but also to ensure a greater sound insulation between apartments but also between the apartments and the common areas. Therefore, all bearing walls and slabs generally have a greater thickness than needed for regular stability requirements of the buildings.
All thermal insulation in the facades and roof have been sized to meet the Minergie® label values, with a clear aim to reduce energy consumption and lower costs for consumers.
All windows in the courtyard were designed as "breathable" windows, meaning : coated aluminium frames with thermal breaks, last generation double glazing, with an additional third glass placed on the exterior in order to provide a ventilated space with a motorized window shade.
The production of the heating and hot water is produced by a heat pumps supplied by geothermal boreholes. The apartment heating is a low temperature floor heating. The coils embedded in the concrete subflooring are fed by a dispenser located in the lobby, which modulates the temperature in each room based on their exposure or their size. In summer, the same network of coils can be supplied with cold water for cooling of the premises.
The ventilation is a type of "double flow system", fresh air (filtered, dusted, moisturized if necessary, heated) is prepared in the central and then fed into each room through the ceiling (located above the sanitary and hall), meanwhile stale air, taken through the sanitary, is returned to central, where its heat is recovered by a heat exchanger, before being discharged.
This way, the air quality inside the housing is guaranteed at any time, without obligation to open the windows, and energy loss by ventilation is minimized.