the spirit of the loft
VerSo is an urban renewal project nestled in a dead-end street. It fits into a context of a dense city, marked by an atmosphere of an industrial suburb that has been built up over time through the activity of small workshops.
The programme is intended to replace a heterogeneous succession of garages, now walled, one-roomed and dilapidated, with a luxury residential building.
Our proposal aims to sew up this disparate urban fabric. It also aims to restore charm and hospitality to this uninhabited dead-end situation. In particular, the future project is based on architecture from the end of the 19th century, seeks a harmony of forms, materials and colours with its neighbours, and proposes a transition of heights.
Its writing draws on the loft’s imagination, and clearly refers to the spirit of the workshop: a raster façade, bricks, high ceilings, generous and regular metal windows. This architectural theme is a way of recalling the history of the site, it also suggests the very great luminosity of the future dwellings.
The construction is organised in the form of a single building whose silhouette tapers towards the sky. The high floors describe a retreat, and the masses are organised in tiers so as to reduce the height perceived from the narrowness of the impasse.
