Continuing our work on the making of centralities, the restructuring of the Saint-Vincent-de-Paul hospital is an exercise in urban stitching within the dense city. Located on one of the site’s historic entrances, the project builds on this idea of connection and porosity to turn the threshold between neighbourhood and city into a true transitional space.
The façade becomes an open device, crossed by porches, courtyards, active through ground floors and a new access route. These elements structure a fluid route that encourages walking and cycling, invites strolling and offers a sensitive reading of the place.
The existing Robin and Oratoire buildings are linked by a network of pedestrian paths, contributing to an urbanity in motion, where the flows generated by housing, workspaces, shops and facilities create situations conducive to shared life.
The courtyards play a central role: they are both common spaces and places to breathe, domestic thresholds that subtly negotiate the passage between privacy and collective life. They extend our commitment to an architecture that is welcoming, functional and sensitive, able to foster an inhabited urbanity at the scale of everyday life.