Caruso St John Architects

2005
Location: Senart, France
Client: CABE / French Culture Ministry
Project Status: Study

Caruso St John Architects and French Architect Eric Lapierre collaborated on this competition organised by the French Culture Ministry and CABE to develop innovative designs for quality low-cost housing.  Three Anglo-French teams were chosen to design schemes for each of 4 sites on the edge of the French new town of Sénart 30km south of Paris.

The design aimed to create a typical suburban form without importing ideas from urban contexts.  30 houses are arranged in two facing terraces, each dwelling having its own garden and parking underneath. The organic form of the two terraces does not refer to the geometry of the city but rather it has more in common with the scale and form of other elements roundabout, such as existing farm buildings.

The scheme is designed to be a self-contained whole that will maintain its coherence whatever other development takes place around it, essential in its context on the very edge of an expanding new town. A series of thresholds is created mediating between domestic intimacy of the interiors and the wider open countryside. Within each house a winter garden forms the first threshold between indoors and outdoors on a very private level.  Each dwelling’s own garden then provides further connection with the outdoors and the wider context although still bound by a wall; finally the gardens collectively form a green core to the project onto which all houses open, creating a strong feeling of collective life and a sense of protection.