Mary Laheen Architects, Aoibheann Ní Mhearáin

In the 1970s, in his dream for high-quality living environments for everyone, the architect Jean Renaudie created an architecture that is humane, generous and beautiful, in the Communist-run Parisian suburb of Ivry-sur-Seine.
At the Centre Jeanne Hachette, Renaudie’s architecture puts spatial complexity in the service of collective and connected urban living and a close relationship between domestic life and the natural world.
The multiplicity and individuality of the forty apartments, each unique, along with the planted terraces and the way they interconnect and overlook each other, reflect these core ideas.
Our model focuses on the “gift of the terraces”. This generosity of space and connection with nature is a gift to the apartment dweller, while the abundant planting is a gift to the city. A partial model of the building (scale 1:25) shows terraces, screen walls and four apartments; it starts at street level and rises to roof level, showing the important exterior stairs from the street as well as the central circulating interior stairwell and lift core which serves twenty-seven apartments. The viewer is invited to look through these apartments, from the rear of the model across the terraces, and also, from “outside” through the terraces and the screen walls. The translucent, textured terraces represent the planted elements and the visual effect they have of screening the apartments, of constantly changing the light internally, and of offering a counterpoint to the solidity and resoluteness of the concrete construction.
Mary Laheen, Aoibheann Ní Mhearáin