The entire project is part of the urban logic of the area that organises a system of blocks between the street and the garden. Two buildings of 207 dwellings frame a central garden and present a developed front on both roads.
The building designed by ANMA is at the western limit. It features two public paths that cross over to the central garden and two breaks in the upper floors, which are crossed by circulation walkways on four levels.
The building is characterised by two large linear structural walls clad in an external insulating complex and smooth white plaster, with breaks provided by woodwork openings. The other façades sport vertical wooden cladding with outside insulation.
The apartments face in two or four directions and feature spacious terraces with various geometries that open onto the garden. The private terraces on either side of the passages or hanging gardens are protected by fine wooden openwork screens.
Three types of housing are developed. Walk-through duplex apartments (one-bedroom and three-bedroom) on the ground floor have individual access via a garden that is prolonged by large private terraces on the central garden.
Studio to three-bedroom apartments on the first, second and third floors open onto large terraces, balconies or loggias. The two-bedroom apartments have a loggia that can be annexed to the apartment, turning it into a three-bedroom apartment.
Large four-bedroom apartments at the top of the building open onto vast private peripheral terraces facing in three different directions. Their specific volume is evocative of penthouses.
The operation adopts a sustainable development approach through its thermal performances. A wood-burning boiler serves the two buildings. Rainwater is collected and stored to water the garden during hot summers.
The submersible garden located on a former deviation in the Cher river is designed to behave as the original ecosystem would: in hydrological terms it forms a buffer zone, in ecological terms it enables reconstitution of the biotope. Remarkable flora has been reintroduced: oxygenising aquatic plants, submersed plants, and a woody strip of birch trees in the area above water. Alder and ash groves create areas of shade and the undergrowth is planted with staggered rows of gooseberry bushes. When the Cher is in spate, the garden’s hollowed profile becomes an expansion area that will evolve in relation to rainfall.