The hybridising of an abstract idea and physical reality is one of the main tasks for anyone who believes that a city cannot be summed up as a collection of separate, independent objects. To combine a web of diversified public spaces with the existing landscape, the urban development project for the Moulon neighbourhood, located at the heart of the Saclay agricultural plateau, will be an exemplary demonstration of this articulation between geometry and geography. Its identity will be constructed by defining its empty spaces, both those already present and those to be created. Following this logic, the development of blocks B6, B7, and B8, the first construction phase of student housing in the Western portion of the neighbourhood, is an opportunity to reconcile city and nature, new architecture, and landscape through a radical formal solution: the periphery of this large ensemble will be rendered denser to create a park at its centre.

Understood as a homogenous urban configuration, “Block B” is defined by its common ground, an inhabited, porous park that encourages interactions between the different public spaces in the neighbourhood, both old and new. Connected to the Joliot Curie mall, the science square, and the Supélec school, it also ensures the continuity of green space between the parc du Moulon and the eco-park. Tall-stemmed, slender aspens, as well as underbrush, ferns, and moss create a sensation of intimacy, freshness, and tranquillity. This is a protected space traversed by students as they come home. It generates sequences and adds nuance to the usual dichotomy between the public space of the street and the private space of one’s home. The transition from one to the other takes on more hybrid forms thanks to the greenery.

The student housing requires an exactness of scale. In an area of 18.45 m² per unit, it must be multi-functional to meet specific needs while also conforming to a universal model of minimal living requirements. Although the goals of this program are unchangeable, creating a park of roughly 8,500 m², more than half of which is open ground, opens many possibilities for exploring this form of habitat. Thinning out the space to grant more of a place for nature led us to create an architecture that seeks to blend into it. In all, 70% of the program consists of buildings lying at the periphery. The rest lies at the park’s centre in the form of small-scale residences. The buildings that ring the block develop an urban mode of living that uses a rather traditional geometry; the T1 buildings are built according to a conventional layout, but their organisation into clusters and upstairs sitting rooms guarantee a higher quality of life. The park residences instead explore other usage qualities through a less typical geometry. Five cylinders, powerful emblems in the picturesque imagination of garden art privilege a sense of charm and sensitivity. They form a series of capriccios without any sense of direction or hierarchy that punctuate people’s walks through the park. By enhancing the linearity of the façade of each studio, a curved geometry creates a more innovative and comfortable habitat that clearly delineates a day area and a sleeping space. Lastly, to participate fully in the perceptible image of the place, the treatment of the façade of each cylinder was designed in collaboration with a visual artist so that the envelope could become a narrative space of its own.

Client: LinkCity / Cost: € 43M excl. VAT / Surface: 25346 m² / Schedule: 2015 – 2017 / Team: Franck Boutté (HEQ), Topotek1 (Landscape)