Design Concept
The rehabilitation of the Savonnerie Heymans creates a real "village" of 42 sustainable social accommodations and a game library. The project is an urban microsurgery that improves the situation of the interior of this city block by lowering the density and making it greener.

The variety of the buildings – new build, renovated and restructured – reflects the variety of accommodations: studios, 1 to 6-bedroom apartments, lofts, duplexes and Maisonettes. The historic elements present on the site are restored and reused. Materials are chosen for their appropriateness to the site and their capability to evoke its industrial past.

Simple and compact volumes are animated by bioclimatic loggias. The loggias sliding glass doors – open or shut – animate randomly the façades.

The complex includes a sequence of communal external spaces that complement one another: the mini forest, the great court and the 3D-park.

Energy concept
The 32 new accommodations are low energy and 4 of the renovated accommodations are passive. The volumes are compact and over insulated. There is a collective heating system (cogeneration + 40 m² of solar panels). All accommodations feature high output dual flux ventilation. 90% of accommodations feature bioclimatic loggias (double skin, passive solar) that provide an acoustical and thermal barrier with no expensive or complicated plan.

In terms of eco construction, the heavily polluted soil has been depolluted. The choice of materials has been dictated by the analyse of life cycles (ACV) and NIBE norms: insulator in hemp fibres or cellulose (vertical walls and sloping roofs) or in expanse cork (floors, some flat roofs); Fermacell boards; whitewash; window frames/façade boarding/terraces: all in FSC labelled European larch; rain water harvesting, etc.
G.D.