Toulouse ZAC Saint-Martin | Aldric Beckmann Architectes

The project’s location, as a gate to the future Ramassiers neighborhood to come, and in between two landscaped spaces, is the foundation of the design thinking process.

If architecture is the art of playing with the constraints, then this block is a smart composition of nowadays’ stakes.

Our goal is to create a landscaped-object that is cohesive with the surrounding greenery, as well as existing patterns and the Concerted Urban Development Zone as a whole. A preexisting dovecote has been preserved and entirely revamped, so that common spaces can be developed around this. It can work as a central link to a particular historical memory.

The project settle itself around those following principals:

- Create a green Oasis through gardens forming the heart of the block and green facades.

- Making up an innovative shape for the plot plan:

The 63 dwellings of the project are shared between six independent plots that have various heights. The two buildings, that include the collective housings, form a build-up street edge. They offer single-family homes on top of their roof, that resonate with the scale of the backyard’s smaller plots.

- Concentrate vertical circulation around one main exterior point:

Two main buildings are connected by elevated pathways, giving each apartment an access from the elevator and the shared exterior staircase. We optimize circulation area and liberate space on the ground to transform it into more common spaces to use. These saved spaces connect to the exterior of the housings.

This move allows the project to reduce the material consumption, and framing it into controlled and reasonable costs.

- Use biosourced material and sustainable constructing methods that are mastered by local businesses:

The structure is based on honeycomb bricks. The low-cost and high performance offered by this method of construction help to manage the buildings to align to a certain sustainable quality - Qualitel BBC Effinergie, Patrimoine Habitat & Environnement.