NOLISTRA // LAN (Local Architecture Network)

Text description provided by the architects.

The Saint-Urbain block has completed the urban development zone of Étoile in Strasbourg. The new neighborhood appears as an urban Island, a colorful emergence in the horizontality of Neudorf’s landscapes.

Emerging an environment in flux, the seven volumes of the new neighborhood sit on an active base made up of food shops and essential services, distributed around a garden.

The housing – offered in terms of free, assisted or intermediate ownership, or as social housing – responds to the diversity of potential living situations. This functional diversity of the block provides energy to the daily life of its users, its residential diversity allows each individual to imagine residing there in the long term.

Each of the buildings offers high performance in terms of energy, while still maintaining high levels of comfort.

As a first architectural response to the public health crisis we have been experiencing since March 2020, this notion of the comfort of living spaces is a leading ambition. Large windows provide all of the housing units with ample natural light, while generous loggias complement the units as the necessary exterior extensions for collective life.The concept of repetition here is essential and democratic.

The unity of the facades aims to achieve a sens of neutrality. The window and its multiplication allows for connection between these scales of architecture and of man. Regardless of who lives behind these walls the unity of the facades reestablishes the equality of its inhabitants as citizens.

At the scale of the city, the selection of colors places the Saint‑Urbain block once again within the history of Strasbourg.

This helps generate a peaceful atmosphere while also bringing urban qualities to the public space. At the scale of the building, and in particular for the program of housing, color promotes individuation; that is, the affirmation of an individual identity..