The Maison Sénior project offers a better residential solution for seniors. The 19 apartments provide residents with a setting and quality of life in line with their needs, at an affordable price (social housings).
Located in the heart of the village, the residence aims to promote exchanges and conviviality while allowing residents to maintain their independence and autonomy. The building was designed as a material bank, meaning that it is composed of healthy and circular products that can be easily dismantled. This will allow for the recovery of the building’s components during renovations or its deconstruction at the end of its life. This construction model is intended to become a reference in urban renewal operations and to meet the ecological and demographic challenges of the coming years.
Living space, Social housing
Project Architect: 10i2la architecture
Project Developer: Neotoa
Project management: AIA INGÉNIERIE (worksite coordination), H3C (thermal engineering office), FLEC (electrical end network engineering office), FORCE ET APPUIS (structural engineering office), IPAC CONSEIL (HSE coordinator), BTP CONSULTANTS (control office), BOIS PAILLE INGÉNIERIE (Straw-insulation consulting)
Project Engineers & Contractors: SARL GAULAY REGNIER, SCOB SAS, GJ COUVERTURE, MENUISERIES DE BRETAGNE, SER AL FER, MBF, GUINARD, ALIX CARISSAN, DESRIAC, BRETAGNE DÉCO PEINTURE, CRLC, CFA (NSA), LEPAGE, HOCHET TP, LEROY PAYSAGES
Project Advisor: Upcyclea
⁂ Healthy Materials (Defined Intended Use Pathway)
Senior users are particularly sensitive to wellbeing and health and need to be accompanied. It is our duty to create the best possible conditions of well-being. Aspects related to the non-toxicity of materials and air quality are particularly important in this respect.
Healthy materials
The design team worked specifically on the choice of the materials. Whenever possible, the project includes bio-based and healthy materials. The use of plastics, among which PVC, and chemical treatments is strictly limited to the minimum (with exceptions due to fire legislation, technical feasibility, and insurance).
To guarantee the use of healthy materials, each product of the building is listed in a table and 50% (by weight) of the products (except for technical contractors) are either cradle to cradle certified or evaluated as having a “C2C potential”.
A „product with C2C potential“ is a product that complies with the following criteria:
The health-oriented design led to several specifications in the choice of materials and processes for this building:
Comfort
The project is designed to give priority to the organization of spaces that preserves the quality of use, habitability and orientation of each dwelling, so that each inhabitant can identify with their private space and enjoy a natural landscape quality in their immediate environment.
In order to promote passive solar comfort, the natural lighting of the rooms is managed according to the usage and the orientations.
Also, work has been done on the shape and envelope of the building in order to guarantee good insulation and low energy and maintenance loads.
This function will obviously benefit to the users of the building, by providing them pleasant and comfortable places to live, without having to leave the city centre. Most importantly, the project will provide healthy spaces, which is particularly essential for a more fragile public.
Also, the attention put in conception will benefit NEOTOA, due to reduced operating costs.
⁂ Healthy Materials (Design for Disassembly, Material Re-Use)
The building was designed to be completely demountable. If it were to be deconstructed, only the concrete slab would remain in place, all other materials could be disassembled and sent to specific recycling channels.
Also, one of the key points of the conception was to identify and use healthy materials with an identified end-of-life recovery path for at least 50% of the buildings (except for technical contractors). This final percentage was about 65 %. It ensures that the project has a good potential for circularity and will be a significant expression of a „material bank“ project.
The use of myUpcyclea as circular supervision system means that all the work that was done at design stage (demountability, choice of healthy and upcyclable materials) will allow a circular management of the building. Whenever products or materials will need to get removed (for example due to maintenance), myUpcyclea will allow to find ecosystems that ensure their recovery.
The maintenance of the building will be easier, and occupants of the building will enjoy a better quality of service on the long term.
The use of myUpcyclea as circular supervision system will also completely transform the facility management for NEOTOA. They will train their facility manager on the creation of ecosystems that will ensure that the best value is preserved at the end of life on any material or component of the building. Neotoa will also be able to generate indicators thanks to the platform. In particular, it will be possible to estimate the circu larity of the building, as well as the residual value of its components.
⁂ User Well-being
In the line of the previous functions (Creating links and animation between residents and with the territory & Ensuring the well-being and health of users), Neotoa wanted the Residence project to contribute to a positive, healthy and eco-beneficial way of managing biological nutrients.
To do so, one of the missions of the coordinator will be to ensure that all residents are offered services to access organic and locallyproduced food. They will establish partnerships with farmers/agricultors in order to propose high quality food at reasonable price and with delivery service (some elderly inhabitants might not have the possibility to move outside La Chapelle Thouarault for groceries). Also, the animator will help the residents to find and put in place solutions for food waste valorisation (ex: residential composting) in order to close the biological cycle.
These subjects have already been investigated and some solutions have emerged and will be reinforced during operation of the building, via animation and mobilization of the residents:
Starting in 2022, a market gardening integration project should also be strengthened in 9 communes, including La Chapelle Thouarault. It should then be able to offer a delivery service for fruits and vegetables orders.
⁂ User Well-being
⁂ Celebrate Cultural and Social Diversity
In 2050, nearly one out of three inhabitants in Britany will be over 60 years old. In order to support its senior tenants in their daily lives and to encourage them to remain at home, Néotoa has launched the Agaë brand. This project is one of the first to take into account the principles of this new brand.
Accessibility
This project is based on planning principles and equipment choices that make life easier for the elderly and will make it easier and quicker to carry out adaptation work in line with the needs of the inhabitants.
All the small housing units are equipped with adapted facilities:
In the common areas and outside spaces, contrasting colours are used to materialize the access paths (building door, lift…).
All housings are completely accessible thanks to the elevator. The intercom system also allows all healthcare professionals to access the door of their patient’s home.
⁂ Celebrate Cultural and Social Diversity
Isolation is a real society problem that particularly affects seniors. With this residence project, NEOTOA wishes to reverse this phenomenon and better integrate future users into the local ecosystem, in particular through activities open to all. This animation is made possible by the provision of rich common spaces: multi-purpose common room, shared vegetable garden.
Animations will take place on a regular basis and will be for all residents willing to participate. Among others, the animations proposed will include:
To ensure these animations actually occur, Neotoa involved its team dedicated to animation early in the process. Several workshops were organized, and the team was strongly connected to the municipal officials, ensuring the best support of the project by local representatives.
Using subventions (“Aide à la Vie Partagée”), Neotoa and the municipal team are able to hire a part-time on-site coordinator dedicated to the animation of the residence. The coordinator will have the following missions:
Neotoa will also help initiating several projects for the residents:
This function will benefit to all residents but also other inhabitants of La Chapelle-Thouarault. Some of the activities will be open to all, and all of them will contribute to create a nice living environment in the city centre. They will also strengthen social ties.
Animation in dedicated spaces will play a key role in supporting the elderly. Indeed, while keeping the notion of pleasure in mind, its objective will be to:
The design was carried out in a participatory process with potential future users, neighbours, local care assistants, elected officials, building project managers and the social landlord in order to meet the needs of users as closely as possible. It was important for them to be actors of their future living space, to exchange on possible constructive techniques, to determine precise architectural objectives in order to make priority choices.
Several workshops were organized in order to collect the desires of the participants and to integrate their ideas into the building conception. In the end, the positive footprint of the building was established as shown below (the size of the foots are proportional to the participant’s interest in the corresponding topic).
The main points of interest were the following:
This positive footprint remained at the core of the preoccupations of the design team through the whole duration of the project. It was taken into account by all stakeholders, resulting in the different elements and delights described in this application form.
Before the Maison Sénior, la Chapelle Thouarault didn’t have access to housings adapted for the elderly. This resulted in the loss of part of the population each year, going to bigger cities with dedicated infrastructures. Sometimes, entire families had to leave the village for this reason. To prevent the desertification of the city, the mayor wanted a project to welcome persons who doesn’t want to stay in unadopted houses but want to stay in the countryside.
The project aims to improve the residential experience of the senior public, encourages home care and diversifies the offer in favour of senior citizens. To reach this goal, the project creates a pleasant living environment, ensures maximum autonomy and contributes to developing social boundings and solidarity between generations, through the following main leverages:
Since the very beginning of the project, integration of the building in its local environment has been considered critical. The project developer wanted to respect the character and architecture of la Chapelle Thouarault.
The workshops that were organized to take into accounts the willing of the future neighbours of the project really insisted on this topic.
The height of the building was limited, and a deep conception work was made on the architecture. As shown in the picture below, different elements were taken into account for a better integration:
