OASIS is rooted in the singular geography of the Plaine du Var, a transitional landscape between the city, the river, the Mediterranean and the hills of Nice. At the meeting point of the Grand Parc Méridia and Avenue de l’Université, the project seeks to extend the landscape, establishing a precise dialogue between human settlement and the realm of nature, between urban density and the presence of living systems.

Set within the former riverbed of the Var, on ground shaped by the river’s successive shifts and sedimentation, OASIS inherits a fertile territory whose memory it seeks to recover. On this narrow plot marking one of the edges of the Méridia development zone, the project reduces its footprint to release more open ground and rises vertically. This slenderness becomes a quality in itself: it opens up views across the city towards the hills and the sea, frees the ground for vegetation, and allows the wind to penetrate deep into the project.

Air becomes a material of architecture. On a site intensely exposed to the sun, with little significant shade, and subject to motorway noise and sea spray, the architectural form emerges from a search for balance between openness and protection. Setbacks, shadows, sheltered external walkways, curved façades and natural cross-ventilation through the apartments create a porous architecture, capable of working with the climate rather than systematically shielding itself from it.

The envelope plays an active role in this approach. Recycled opalescent glass fins filter the Mediterranean light and evoke the former agricultural greenhouses of the Plaine du Var. Their orientation provides solar protection and privacy for the apartments while guiding the movement of air, locally creating Venturi effects. Angled window reveals extend this principle by generating pressure differentials that encourage the drawing and natural circulation of air through the apartments. The façade thus acquires a genuine climatic depth: it protects, filters, directs the gaze and sets the wind in motion.

This aerological approach extends into the landscape. Reducing the building footprint maximises planted areas in open ground and creates a green heart continuous with the Grand Parc Méridia. Shade, the coolness of the soil and the evapotranspiration of the planting all help to temper the air locally. Combined with the permeability of the external walkways and the building’s vertical slenderness, this landscape contributes to a climatic chimney effect, encouraging the circulation of cooled air, particularly towards the lower levels, which are less directly exposed to the wind. The ground supports life; living systems cool the air; the air circulates: together, they form a single climatic system.

OASIS is, above all, a project about dwelling. Access via external walkways enables the apartments to benefit from natural cross-ventilation while transforming circulation spaces into genuine places of social interaction. Generously open, naturally lit and ventilated, these walkways extend into spacious shared areas that are accessible and open to appropriation. Visibility, light and the presence of others contribute as much to the safety of these spaces as to their conviviality. Within a student social housing residence, the aim is to encourage autonomy without creating isolation, and to enable encounters without ever imposing collective life.

This social ambition lies at the heart of the project and has guided the dialogue maintained throughout its design with ERILIA, FAC-Habitat and the residents already present on the site. This collective intelligence has made it possible to consider simultaneously the project’s urban integration, everyday operation, maintenance, safety, comfort and opportunities for appropriation. It has sustained an ongoing search for balance between architectural ambition, feasibility, economic control and quality of use, with one shared objective: the well-being of the students who will inhabit OASIS.

The project therefore embodies a form of architectural generosity that welcomes rather than imposes, attentive to thresholds, intermediate spaces, places of encounter and places of retreat alike. From the apartment to the garden, from the walkways to the shared spaces, from the base to the envelope, a single architectural language seeks delicacy, generosity and unity.

OASIS draws upon the resources and craftsmanship of its territory: low-carbon concrete incorporating local aggregates, serpentine stone from the Nice region at the building’s base, Alpine pine, recycled glass and aluminium. Mineral matter, vegetation, glass and metal become different expressions of the same geography, stretching from the Mediterranean to the Alps. Endemic species and plants adapted to the Mediterranean climate occupy the open ground and extend onto the shared rooftop, where substrate depths of up to 1.80 metres allow generous, long-lasting vegetation to take root. Permeable concrete surfaces maintain the porosity of the ground and contribute to the site’s hydraulic transparency.

This principle of restraint extends to the project’s energy strategy, with connection to the district heating network and rooftop photovoltaic production conceived as part of the wider energy strategy for the development zone. The low-carbon concrete column-and-slab structure forms the enduring framework of the building. Independent from the interior fit-out, which consists of lightweight, demountable and reconfigurable partitions, it allows the building to evolve and accommodate new uses in the future without compromising the elements that give it permanence.

OASIS seeks to bring into dialogue the forces of a territory and the ways of life of those who inhabit it.

From this close attention to reality emerges an architecture that is climatic, social and sensitive — one that seeks to belong both to its territory and to time.