Fairness for housing

The major question posed by the tender for the 360 homes on the Pontoise ZAC BOSSUT is:
How to ensure both quality and diversity for such a large property in such a tight economic context?
By quality, we mean architectural quality (urban level), quality of use (group level), quality of life (domestic level).
The urban specification is that of the classic block or continuous buildings positioned along the periphery around a central space. To meet this urban planning requirement and also create diversity, which in our view is a prerequisite for avoiding the errors of the past in the design of large housing developments, our bid proposes a height envelope of different sized blocks. Throughout the bid as a whole, we use a declination of scale with 1, 4, 6 and 10 storey buildings. This new profile for the blocks means a 2m displacement on the south and west facades to soften the proportions of the streets and enable strips of vegetation to be planted to create distance between the ground floor housing and the public areas.

Furthermore, each block is divided into as many buildings as there are stairwells and the architectural expression of the façade of each building is addressed by one of the architects of our group - i.e. 5 façade treatments. This diversity, however, is controlled through the work led by our workshop team to produce a consistent idea across the whole design through repetition of these architectural expressions.
These two combined approaches mean that we can provide volumetric and architectural diversity while retaining coherence in the overall composition.

Our first principle is fairness: fairness in our treatment of the buildings and the apartments and in relation to the use of the residences and to the site as a whole. The corollary of this principle is the ability to create collective uses.
We chose to pool outdoor spaces for shared used of the rooftops which are accessible for residential use.

Despite the high density desire for the site, we have positioned our blocks in such a way that each apartment has a North-South or East-West aspect, or is positioned in the corners so that it benefits from a double orientation.
We prioritised a full south-facing position on the planted areas.
The apartments all have a storeroom inside the apartment adjoining the kitchen and a cellar which is located either on the landing or on the ground floor on the route that leads naturally to the apartment.