Ilot Queyries: A Sculptural Residential Complex

Ilot Queyries is a project born out of Bordeaux’s both historic tradition and heritage – the city is included in the Unesco World Heritage list – and pioneering future. This residential complex on the banks of River Garonne has a sculptural look that aims at combining history, innovation, privacy, density and ecology, but also light and comfort. MVRDV and Flint Studio have collaborated with JA Joubert Architecture and with Sabine Haristoy for the landscape of the surrounding urban spaces of this “laboratory-developed” complex. This triple entity has made use of technology and lighting effects to give the building a strong presence, which is further enhanced by its ceramic outer skin – over 10,000 sq. m differently shaped ceramic tiles part of the KeraTwin system by Agrob Buchtal. These can be equipped with Hytect technology, thanks to which – by the action of light – microorganisms, algae, fungi and moss start decomposing, making the building last longer. Thanks to Hytect’s self-washing effect, the façade has low maintenance costs: when it rains, dirt and microorganisms are simply infiltrated and removed.

This intelligent façade system is also installed on the roof, which makes it possible for it to dialogue with the outer walls – exception made for the higher north-eastern side with a glazed roof and a restaurant facing the river and some apartments. While ceramic is the unquestionable protagonist of Ilot Queyries – with a light color that lends the building a high level of albedo (the ability of a surface to reflect solar radiation) on the street-facing sides and red courtyard-facing façades – its lines have an unconventional and unique character: the walls and roofs have an irregular and asymmetrical profile and a dynamic angle of 14 to 45 degrees. The roofs are arranged into carefully calibrated slopes to provide maximum ventilation, daylight and sun to the building itself and to its neighbors, while also defining complex and varied interior spaces.

Ilot Queyries as a sustainable presence in the new Bastide Niel district

With its 282 apartments (of which 128 are meant as social housing units), underground parking garage, commercial spaces and rooftop restaurant, Ilot Queyries actually forms an entity with three smaller adjacent residential buildings by JA Joubert Architecture. Together, they integrate onto the surrounding urban spaces and conform to the guidelines drawn up for a district that is being redesigned. Bastide Niel is indeed to be urbanized – preserving or reusing as much as possible of its heritage of warehouses, barracks and railway tracks – to host, in the next future, about 3,500 families. It will also house offices, shops, several public services and University of Bordeaux’s facilities. MVRDV created the masterplan for this 35-ha area, which will create a sustainable environment dominated by pedestrians and cyclists. This is a quality that Ilot Queyries has already adopted through its ample and central public courtyard that features various plants and trees and connects to the adjacent green areas and parks. To have open spaces nearby where you live is a necessity that has been further highlighted in the past two years and that has been met here through balconies or open loggias that look out onto Bordeaux’s skyline.

For more info: https://agrob-buchtal.de/en

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