CANOPIA PARK

Winner 2014 of the Palmarès Grand Public Architecture Contemporaine, France

Living between wide-open and shared spaces

The residential development designed by Babin+Renaud is located in Nantes' nearly completed eco-district, La Bottière-Chênaie. Surrounded by an open, arborescent landscape open to the public, it is akin to a welcoming island and is a good place to live. It is accessed from a brand-new plant-filled mall by climbing a few steps up to a raised interior courtyard. From this shared public space there are numerous choice views, in particular to the south towards a preserved natural setting and beyond, the metropolitan skyline.

The courtyard is surrounded by four buildings. On the south-east side a series of wide walkways on two levels give access to the housing units, which enjoy large terraces or balconies. On the north-west side there are twenty flats on four levels that look out to the more urban part of the new neighborhood which can be seen through five openwork stairwells. Two more vertical buildings on the north-east and south-west corners each contain some dozen smaller units. The first runs along the planted mall which contains an entrance lobby shared by all the residents and connects the raised courtyard to the shared space and a partially submerged parking garage.

In this configuration the development is characterized by the generosity and quality of the common spaces, whether it's the different landings to the flats, the walkways that connect one building to another, the stairs that lead to the streets or the naturally-lit parking area. Shutters, balustrade and floors are as meticulously designed as the buildings' architecture. Sparkling white, the innumerable vertical picture-windows, framed in shiny metal, jut out from the buildings' minimalist surfaces. Opalescent glass, stainless-steel façades and sand-blasted concrete round out the project's visual and tactile pallet, the distinctiveness of which is as restrained as it is refined.

51 family housings in the urban landscape of Nantes, France. In this configuration the development is characterized by the generosity and quality of the common spaces, whether it's the different landings to the flats, the walkways that connect one building to another, the stairs that lead to the streets or the naturally-lit parking area. Shutters, balustrade and floors are as meticulously designed as the buildings' architecture. Sparkling white, the innumerable vertical picture-windows, framed in shiny metal, jut out from the buildings' minimalist surfaces. Opalescent glass, stainless-steel façades and sand-blasted concrete round out the project's visual and tactile pallet, the distinctiveness of which is as restrained as it is refined.