Viravent Apartments, Cenon Homes, Bordeaux Housing, Building Project, Architecture Images
Viravent Apartments in Cenon, Bordeaux
112 Flats Development in France – design by Martin Duplantier Architectes
12 Nov 2019
Viravent Apartments
Architects: Martin Duplantier Architectes
Location: Rue Emile Zola/Rue Henri Descot, Cenon, Bordeaux, France

photo © Yohan Zerdoun
Towards a new paradigm – The burning issue in Metropolitan Bordeaux is a project of 50,000 housing units. Envisioned and designed to be a real estate opportunity, the overly dense development has created quite a controversy. The Viravent Apartments project proposes another paradigm. Built before the beginning of the 50,000 yet still comparable, given the shared design model (sited in the heart of town, but in a diffuse section without access to the ZAC), the Viravent project integrates into an existing urban fabric more than imposing upon it.
photo © Yohan Zerdoun
Socially, above all, it represents a mixing of first-time buyers and investors in a contrasted sector between large collectives and freestanding buildings. It is, in the same breath, a political statement. Until a few years ago, the construction of anything besides socialized housing in the Hauts de Garonne district would have been seen as incongruous. Only Foncière Logement was up for the challenge of social melding, choosing Jean Nouvel as their architect. Here, not a Nouvel is found, but an elegant architecture within a conserved fra...