Les Fiches Nord

Located near the northern entrance to the city of Lausanne and its motorway slip road, close to an M2 metro station and a park-and-ride facility, the Fiches Nord district will eventually provide 600 new homes.



Built by the Lausanne Municipal Pension Fund, alongside a neighbouring project of similar scale, the development comprises four buildings housing 67 affordable two-, three- and four-room flats, including 17 social housing units.



Four mineral-coloured buildings with a polygonal layout, whose compactness is softened by corner loggias and the recessed openings, are firmly anchored in the site. In accordance with the principles of an urban planning charter, they adhere to street alignment, whilst the Lausanne General Land Use Plan (PGA) further defines the general characteristics of the buildings, such as their size, volume and the distances between buildings. The form of the buildings, derived from a distortion of the orthogonal volumes illustrated in the charter, seeks to create cross-views and avoid direct sightlines between buildings. Both dense and open, the proposed urban form produces a narrowing that brings about a reversal of the figure-ground relationship, illustrating the notion of ‘density of void’.