Immeuble Verdeaux Housing

Immeuble Verdeaux Housing
© Eik Frenzel

IMMEUBLE VERDEAUX HOUSING

Dreier Frenzel Architecture + Communication

LOCATION
Renens, Switzerland

CATEGORY
Apartments

AREA
670 m²

YEAR
2018

MANUFACTURERS
Finstral, Kästli Storen, Miroiterie, Ménétrey-lift

LEAD ARCHITECTS
Yves Dreier, Joao Fernandes, Eik Frenzel, Isabelle Ihl, Marie-cécile Simon

Text description provided by architect.

Immeuble Verdeaux is a housing building located on a very specific plot, whose triangular shape allowed very few possibilities to be inhabited. By pushing the vertical circulation out of the envelope of the building, the surface is maximized on each floor.

Immeuble Verdeaux Housing
© Matthieu Gafsou
Immeuble Verdeaux Housing
© Matthieu Gafsou
Immeuble Verdeaux Housing
© Matthieu Gafsou

The typology plays then a double game, with on one hand clear-shaped night spaces and on the other hand a daily space evolving in a row with pinching and dilating effects.

The particularly constraining status of the plot generates the shape of the building, a triangle-rectangle with two truncated corners.

Within the external matrix, the internal spatiality evokes the “fractal” by proposing an orthogonal geometry of the spaces of the rooms.

Immeuble Verdeaux Housing
© Matthieu Gafsou
Immeuble Verdeaux Housing
© Eik Frenzel

At the meeting of these two figures, an interstitial counter-form emerges which colonises the day spaces (entrance, kitchen, dining room, living room, office) and organises them in a row by pinching and dilating effects.

In order to maximise the rental surface area on a small plot of land, the stairs are arranged on the facade. This extraction of circulation areas outside the built volume allows an optimisation of the typology of the flats by grouping the service areas (lift, bathrooms, kitchen) around a minimal central core.

On the façade, the staggered arrangement of the balconies guarantees the integration of the three flights of stairs while reinforcing the collective identity of the building and encouraging interaction between residents.

Immeuble Verdeaux Housing
© Matthieu Gafsou
Immeuble Verdeaux Housing
© Matthieu Gafsou

Contextual insertion is achieved through the reinterpretation of numerous elements borrowed from the 19th-century architectural register that is expressed on the neighbouring buildings: load-bearing facade, mansard roof, French windows, window frame markings, projecting balconies, railings.


Immeuble Verdeaux Housing
Site plan
Immeuble Verdeaux Housing
Floor plan
Immeuble Verdeaux Housing
Floor plan
Immeuble Verdeaux Housing
Floor plan
Immeuble Verdeaux Housing
Floor plan
Immeuble Verdeaux Housing
Floor plan


Immeuble Verdeaux Housing
Elevation
Immeuble Verdeaux Housing
Elevation
Immeuble Verdeaux Housing
Elevation
Immeuble Verdeaux Housing
Axonometric