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Architects: Notan Office
- Area: 555 m²
- Year: 2022
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Photographs:Stijn Bollaert
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Manufacturers: RENSON, Aluplast, Cembrit
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Lead Architects: Frédéric Karam
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Text description provided by the architects. Situated on the thoroughfare of Côteaux Street within Schaerbeek's urban fabric, this venture unfolds amidst a densely woven metropolitan tapestry. The undertaking stakes its claim upon a parcel previously housing a street-fronting garages.
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The endeavor encompasses the construction of four distinct abodes, alongside an adjunct workspace. Côteaux Street, a thoroughfare characterized by its diverse socioeconomic strata and architectural eclecticism, entwines a multitude of styles and volumetric configurations.
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Our intervention aligns with the axial trajectory of Philomène Street, thusly reaping the benefits of an unobstructed vista and optimal solar orientation. Hence, a panoramic vista extends forth, inviting contemplation of the site's potential and forging a compelling urban interplay between the project's essence and its ambient surroundings.
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With the aspiration to both foreground this latent potential and grant the denizens dominion over the courtyard and garden milieu, the street-facing edifice ascends, engaging in direct dialogue with the thoroughfare. Simultaneously, a secondary volume nestled within the internal enclave cleaves the garden expanse, demarcating two distinct realms: a private rear patio and a communal central garden.
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Within the anterior edifice, a duet of two-bedroom apartments and a four-bedroom duplex find their abode, while the nucleus accommodates a three-bedroom duplex in conjunction with a workspace. Thus, the project is distinguished by its heterogeneity of functions and typologies, entwined with an unwavering allegiance to the public realm and the plot's intrinsic disposition.
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URBAN ASSIMILATION
A facade wielding such commanding spatial narrative warrants a reciprocal architectural rejoinder. Thus, the edifice stands as both a pivotal juncture and a resolute datum, orchestrating the perspective. Engaging in a dialectical exchange with its angular counterparts across the way, the facade derives its aesthetic trajectory directly from the built environment. Distinctly lighter in its materiality than its environs, it imparts a subtler aesthetic cadence, thereby affording the neighboring structures the liberty to maintain their preeminent architectural vernacular.
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MULTIFARIOUS TYPOLOGIES, A UNIFIED PANOPLY
KOTO amalgamates a diverse pantheon of typological constructs into a harmonious whole. Dwellings spanning two, three, and four bedrooms, alongside a professional enclave, are judiciously dispersed across a bifurcated volume, orchestrating an ensemble of succinct coherence. In the crucible of an urban milieu marked by density and constrained by the exigencies of a diminutive parcel, the project's perspicacity is manifest in its capacity to proffer a distinctive microcosm, ingeniously tethered by a collective expanse.
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Facilitated by the built volume nestled within the courtyard precinct — a domicile paired with on office — the shared exterior expanse becomes a traversed tapestry of communal habitation.
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VERSATILE, ADAPTIVE
The plan's inherent rationality and the structural schema's adaptability conspire to engender a spatial paradigm capable of accommodating the evolving needs of its occupants. At its core, a functional nucleus houses the gamut of domestic amenities: circulation nodes, bathing sanctuaries, culinary facilities, and more, emancipating the facades to entertain a kaleidoscope of spatial configurations. Be it a solitary chamber, a dual-chamber suite, a traverse-oriented living milieu, an oblique spatial schema, or an orientation that either courts the garden or the street vista — the project engenders a panorama of habitation prospects.
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