Shortlisted entry in collaboration with Lipa + Serge Goldstein Architects, Paris

Our second competition entry and research project with Lipa and Serge Goldstein focussed on the Parisian satellite city of Savigny-le-Temple, a modernist urban grid set amongst substantial forests. Our proposal, for 30 dwellings, drew upon the idea and physicality of the surrounding woodland.

‘Each of us is the Denecourt of our own home’

We researched the life and work of Claude Denecourt (1788-1875), a soldier of the Napoleonic wars who retired to the royal forest of Fontainebleau, there constructing a series of narratives around the landmarks and curiosities of the woodland. Denecourt’s ‘reading’ of Fontainebleau, which became a significant tourist attraction with the man himself selling guided walks at the railway station, struck a chord with us as we contemplated the design of affordable housing in a related context. The metaphor of Denecourt’s work, as an unknown individual making his own narrative out of a given environment (and even, at times, building it anew), seemed to fit with our own notion of how meaningful social housing might be built- in effect, the architect designs the forest, the dweller provides the meanings.

We therefore sought an idea of ‘forest’ in the resulting buildings, both literally (to respond to the wooded context) and ideologically. The twin blocks of homes are designed to provide a rich and spatially-complex ‘framework’ within which each occupant can create their own ‘perfect home.’ Essential to this was that customisation (Denecourt’s paths…) is embraced and celebrated by the overarching structure rather than restrained by it.

The buildings are unified by timber screens, and a central glade of pollarded trees provides an intimate, multi-functional shared outdoor space. The form of the buildings, essentially a pair of simple boxes, was modified by existing desire lines and usage patterns found on-site, and rounded off by extensive planting at all levels, including the roof.

The design presents a generous challenge to each occupant, an opportunity to define one’s own place in the forest.