SCHL Competition | La Borde-Crêtes
05/2022 · Suisse, Lausanne

The 110-unit collective housing project integrates the constraints of the parcel as an opportunity to rethink the typology. The objective is to bring a similar quality of life to all the buildings that make up the project, the vast majority of the units open generously onto the garden courtyard and benefit from visual clearances.
In contiguous order on the rue de La Borde, the spread of the constructions following the natural slope of the land allows to generate a scale of construction in relation to the historical buildings present in the district and offer a contribution in natural light.
The morphological approach tends to reduce vis-à-vis despite the high density of occupation of the site. The dwellings along rue de la Borde "bend" towards the garden to get the view and the sun, while at the back of the courtyard the through apartments of the head building benefits from a view in the axis of the garden or in enfilade along the Crêtes.
The project's density invites us to think of the loggia as a buffer space between the intimacy of the apartment and the collective space of the garden. Generously designed, they open towards the south with protection against the fall as discreet and light as possible and are adorned with a parapet (hosting vegetation at the discretion of the inhabitant) on the western sides, which offers privacy and puts distance between the apartments. Open to the living spaces, they extend their use, oriented towards the Crêtes neighborhood and its garden village character.
The urban character is favored, with an architectural language drawing on the character of the nearby neighborhood and leaving room for mineral materiality: rendering on the floors, concrete facing base, and projecting cords. The architecture of the buildings is presented, in the public space, as mineral masses simply pierced by windows, thus offering a protective "case" to the nuisances of the Borde and its somewhat "hostile" atmosphere.