Proposal for the rehabilitation of Robin and Oratoire buildings, Saint-Vincent-de-Paul Hospital.
110 apartments, business premises, shops and gardens.
In collaboration with Neufville-Gayet Architectes.
Collaborator: Neufville-Gayet, Bruther
Team: Apsys + Batigère + RATP + Scintillo (developers), Remi Algis (landscape), Bollinghergrohmann (structure), VPEAS (quantity surveyor), Atmos Lab + Le Sommer Environnement (environment), RBI (fluids) and Aïda (acoustic)
The Oratoire and Robin buildings are a key feature of the hospital campus: they form a stable, calm, almost timeless reference point, having been used for a variety of purposes without losing any of their original significance. This means that in order to make Oratoire and Robin into homes, we must pay close attention to their character, analysing them and capturing their essence so that they can be intelligently converted and made into a model of sustainable rehabilitation.
In close collaboration with Neufville-Gayet, we have developed a rehabilitation and housing strategy, based on an attentive analysis of the existing buildings, that involves adding and removing as little as possible and reusing as much as we can. We have made the spatial diversity of the buildings into an asset, leading us to design a selection of homes embodying some ten different typologies.
So that modes of use and tools initiated as part of the Grands Voisins community project can remain in place, we have provided communal areas that will allow residents to construct their living environment more effectively. For instance we propose to reactivate the existing carpentry workshop to help residents create some of the furniture for their homes.
Last but not least, the Oratoire courtyard forming the heart of the project, now a public area, is transformed into a clearing dotted with trees where living plants and water connect the public and the private, the individual and the collective, the buildlngs and the city.