Architectural Eyecandy - Photos, drawings, models of buildings and urban spaces

[ac3r]

Façade design is a major issue in Waterloo Region as we all know. So many buildings in this area suffer from low quality materials combined with low effort design. Here's one apartment building I recently fell in love with that, materially speaking, is quite simple. But the way in which it is used is elegant and welcoming. Designed by Vincent Parreira for his firm AAVP Architecture, this is a residential building located in Paris, France.

Midrise buildings such as this, using unique façade design, should be way more prominent across the region. It's not a challenge to do. It would be nice to see blocks of beautiful buildings occupying all the urban voids in the region, but alas.

A simple but essential question guides the conception of Tolbiac: what is housing? Housing should elevate the individual to the rank of inhabitant of the world, install a home and in the city, connect to yesterday and tomorrow, let us contemplate the near and distant elsewhere, structure our views, let us touch the mineral and the woody, the light and the dark, be caressing and rough, clear and blurred, welcoming like a hotel and simple like a shelter, make us big and small at the same time.

A good housing building would know how to calm the metropolitan agitation without extinguishing it, how to make a private salon and a public place, how to be both a hut and a palace, how to cultivate the good life and let the weeds grow, how to watch over the sleep of the inhabitant and make the passer-by dream. Without ignoring the functional dimensions of architecture, the Tolbiac project attempts to take housing towards the multiple forms of living, by exploring the expressiveness of materials, the potential of common spaces, the openings of the landscape and the arrangement of typologies, the relationship to the place
and its history.

The duality of wood and concrete guides the design of the project. The mechanical qualities of concrete, its resistance to fire and its acoustic attenuation capabilities led to its use in the structure. Larch wood is used as cladding on all surfaces, while the structures of the wood- frame walls and the vertical uprights of the facade are made of Douglas fir. The visible wood elements acquire a dark color by autoclave treatment, evoking the facades of the old warehouses of industrial Paris. The tactile qualities of the material as well as its visual qualities are highlighted. Solid wood was preferred to glued laminated wood for the posts of the facade, with the intention of enhancing the qualities of the material, developing an architectural aspect reminiscent of the natural origin of this element, breaking with the products reconstituted by gluing usually used in wood construction. Glued laminated elements are used very occasionally for the creation of curved beams carrying common spaces. Metal is used for the railings, with a gunmetal finish that integrates it into the whole.

The distinction between architecture and construction is often seen in the details. A subtle play regulates the placement of the vertical posts of the balconies. They do not follow a regular pattern, as one might think at first glance, but are offset laterally and vertically by ten centimeters at each level, gradually corbelling onto the street space. The device animates the façade and increases the surface of the balconies with the increase of the floors. This grid that unites the different blocks on the street side absorbs the voids left between each block. On the courtyard side, the interstices become common spaces, both terraces and plazas, with hoppers visually linking the different levels and the addition of extraordinary elements, such as "nests", hanging lounges shared by the residents. The maze of circulation revisits the joyful disorder and surprises of the backyards of the industrial suburbs of Paris. Two years of pandemics help to measure the value of these spaces open to all residents, offering an alternative to home, and allowing all residents to enjoy the views of the city. The roof garden open to all opens at 240° on a panorama piling up several decades of the evolution of Paris, and on the sky.