French architects a/LTA shared with us their Senior’s Residence in Vern sur Seiche, France. More images and architect’s description after the break.
Beyond the urban context and economic targets, our first goal is to offer future residents a comfortable place where you can find landmarks of a lifetime. A place where there is a balance between a “community” life stimulating the exchange and the relationship but preserving the necessary privacy and tranquility.
Specifically, it has to be seen as a village with streets, a park, bridges, squares (places of exchange), a “church”, a restaurant, a hairdresser … its public spaces, its private spaces. A place that everyone can appropriate for himself.
However, this “secured” place has to be a open space. The urban context and the landscape is particularly suitable to these loopholes that will preserve this vital relationship to the outside world: the park, its trees, the seasons, the nursery nearby and future housing. All these opportunities for visual or physical contact with the outside world have guided the project design.
Urban and architectural part
The essence of the project lies in the simple idea of collecting the entire program around a large patio. This patio with tall trees is intended as an extension of the park inside the residence. The landscape interferes in the architecture of the project. A composition of the inverted U-shaped plan, open to the south of the park, struck us as obvious. In that point, each resident has a privileged view on the park. The rooms enjoying an east or west view while services and common places are in a traversing North / South position
On the other hand, the notion of wandering and contemplation guided the composition of the plan: although described differently depending on the degree of dependency of the residents, we felt it essential to offer a wider choice on the ability to walk, to meet or isolate themselves in the corridors of the residence.
Architects: a/LTA Location: Vern sur Seiche, France Design Team: : a_LTA (Le Trionnaire (x2) – Tassot – Le Chapelain) project manager : Mathias Robert + CETRAC + PROCESS CUISINES Date: 2011 (Restricted Competition) Area: 5,200 sqm Images: Courtesy of a/LTA
