53 social housing units in Tours, France | Atelier du Pont

This project in Tours (France) developed 53 social housing units distributed across three buildings sitting around an open block crossed by public alleyways. The varying size of the buildings and their adapted typologies (stacked townhouses, small collective units in one plot, and collective units) help ensure the change in scale from a main urban artery to the north and a more vernacular, residential neighborhood to the south.

Even though the various typologies create a diversity of volumes, the treatment of the façades is homogenous and stripped down; they are covered with white, enameled terra cotta tiles so as not to introduce too many different architectural styles around the adjacent chapel.

The collective buildings are punctuated by wooden corner loggias onto which living rooms and kitchens open up to create a single interior-exterior volume.

The stacked units emulate city houses with their exterior access, double-height volumes, gardens at the entrances, and landscaped pergolas and terraces.

The strength of this project lies in its capacity to insert social housing in the heart of the city through the sobriety of its architecture, the quality of the materials used, as well as its close connection with the surrounding urban and social landscape.