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Photographs:Daniel Osso
Text description provided by the architects. The neighborhood of the Allée Verte, located between the Boulevard Beaumarchais and the Boulevard Richard Lenoir, near the Bastille, is characterized by the heteroclite aspect of its buildings. An old suburban architecture meets, not always easily, more modern real-estate constructions.
The building of the Allée Verte is a part of this environment thanks to a simple balance between volumes and materials.
The duality of its program is expressed by the superposition of two clearly identifiable entities: the plastered façades and the glass panels of the dwellings overhang the wooden volume of the child care centre.
The presence of the child care centre's garden on the ground floor, along the future tree-lined mall in the rue Nicolas Appert, involves an additional constraint: for safety reasons, the windows of the dwellings must not overhang this area dedicated to children.
Placed directly on the wooden base of the child-care centre, the dwellings are organized in a L-form around a vegetated flat roof. Thus is given to each dwelling a double orientation, between the street and the vegetal flat roof. Overhanging the garden, the façade made of fixed glass panels diffuses the natural light inside the dwellings.
The façade on the Allée Verte, plastered with a bright coating, is randomly animated by the bay-windows, the loggias and the bow-windows.
Around the vegetal flat roof, the Eternit panels, arranged in a scale pattern, create a play of shadows on the façades. Under this layer, coloured sliding shutters display variation depending on whether the inhabitants are there or not.
The child-care centre, organized around a central patio, gives priority to the connection with the garden, by preserving wide areas for openings towards the outside.
The simplicity of volumes and lines and the proportions adapted to the life and vision of the children offer a serene and welcoming setting, intentionally avoiding any “puerile” connotation.
In the upper floors, the natural light bathes the inside of the building, in the dwellings as well as in the common areas. Every kitchen has a loggia, offering both a visual extension and a daily quality of life. On the two last floors, two duplex have access to a wide and sun-lighted flat roof, overhanging the roof of Paris.
