Archinect - News

MVRDV's courtyard apartment building Ilot Queyries completes in Bordeaux

2021-09-16T18:00:00-04:00

Construction of MVRDV’s Ilot Queyries, a courtyard apartment building located in the French port city of Bordeaux, has been completed.

The project is situated across from the city’s UNESCO World Heritage historic center. It is the largest building in a development of four buildings master-planned by MVRDV and Joubert Architecture.

Co-designed by local architects Flint, Ilot Queyries features 282 homes, including 128 for social housing, along with parking, commercial space, a rooftop restaurant, and a large collective green space.

The building was envisaged to embody the principles of the neighboring MVRDV-designed Bastide-Niel masterplan, which combines the intimacy, surprise, and liveliness of Bordeaux’s UNESCO World Heritage historic city with the density, ecology, light, and comfort of the modern city.

Per the architects, “Ilot Queyries thus adopts the same approach as the Bastide-Niel masterplan: the building fills the site to its boundaries, lending an intimate feeling to th...

Inventively-clad gentrification in the form of Bordeaux's "Urban Dock"

2016-12-22T13:13:00-05:00

Take an abandoned industrial neighborhood in Bordeaux, France, affix a masterplan by urbanist Nicholas Michelin to it, and then add in an inventive cladding system over a 56-unit apartment building, and you have the fundamental makings of "Urban Dock," a recently completed project by Hamonic + Masson & Associés. The title is rooted in a metaphor, the kind of idealistic gentrification that parachutes into a depressed urban swath and attempts to liven things up. Whatever one's feelings about that, the undulating series of extruded porches and shifting color schemes is eye-catching:

As a press release explains, "The building is clad in metal, which is occasionally perforated in order to allow loggias to appear whilst also highlighting the articulation of projections and recesses, creating intriguing vertical patterns. The cladding also produces an iridescent ‘double skin’ with different transparencies and a shell-like effect, with a shimmering exterior that provides a contrast to the...

A look at Sou Fujimoto's proposed sustainable, timber-frame tower

2016-03-30T13:56:00-04:00

In collaboration with Laisné Roussel and developer Pitch Promotion, Sou Fujimoto's proposed 50-meter tall mixed-use timber-frame structure Canopia would be the tallest of its kind if built. Riffing a bit off the swirling form of Fujimoto's Abre Blanc apartment building, the proposed structure includes 199 residential units, over 3,700 square meters of commercial offices, a panoramic bar and roof gardens, and 500 square meters of retail space.

In addition to being a part of the phase two development of the Amargnac sector of the Bordeaux Saint-Jean Belcier ZAC (urban development zone), Canopia is designed to be environmentally sustainable. Aside from attempting to achieve "Biosource" certification by using cross-laminated spruce or silver fur timber for the flooring and beams, sustainability is partly achieved by the rooftop gardens, which are connected by raised walkways and allow residents to wander among fruit trees, water reservoirs, and vegetable gardens before hitting the bar/re...

Two wooden towers to rise in Bordeaux

2016-03-18T15:30:00-04:00

France is to make its first attempt at timber tower construction with two tall wooden buildings in Bordeaux. The towers, reaching 50m and 57m in height, will be developed in the centre of the city by Bordeaux Euratlantique, a public body involved in modernising Bordeaux. The project team for “Hypérion”, the 18-storey (57m) residential tower, will include Eiffage, specialist wood contractor Woodeum, social landlord Clairsienne and architect Jean-Paul Viguier & Associés.

Team BIG+FREAKS Wins Competition for New Cultural Center in Bordeaux

2012-06-21T19:38:00-04:00

The collaborative effort of team BIG+FREAKS freearchitects, dUCKS scéno, Khephren Ingénierie, VPEAS, ALTO Ingénierie, Vincent Hedont, PBNL, Mryk & Moriceau, Ph.A., has won the competition to design a new 12,000 m2 cultural center on the riverfront of Bordeaux, France, merging three cultural institutions into one single building. [...] The Regional Council of Bordeaux selected the winning team among proposals from SANAA, the Toulouse-based firm W-Architectures and Bordeaux-based FLINT.