Nemausus and Nimes Jardins Solidaire

A lucky encounter with Maria, a local community garden worker for Nimes Jardin Solidaire, allowed us to see inside the Jean Nouvel-designed social housing project Nemausus. The Solidaire’s office is run from an apartment in Nemausus, and she was busy unloading food up the stairs when I asked if we could see inside. I’d been intrigued by this astounding building ever since I first came across it studying urban design, and seeing it from the outside years later simply wasn’t enough to satisfy my curiosity. Jean Nouvel designed and oversaw the construction of Nemausus I and II between 1985 and 1987. Two separate seven-story buildings flank a grove of trees and outdoor space, one a little smaller than the other because of site constraints. Nouvel minimized construction costs by using simple industrial materials and minimal interior finishes. Built in an industrial zone in the southwest part of Nimes they were part of a program to renovate a decrepit district of 1960's public housing with Nemausus providing a radical alternative model to the usual limited, desolate programs of rent-controlled, subsidized housing.

Sleek and modern, they remain an outstanding alternative to the usual, dreary subsidized housing projects. Nouvel managed to keep the construction costs down while providing much larger apartments to the usual confined spaces in social housing. The typical apartment is defined by a 5x12 meter bay but includes the space of the terrace covered by the cantilevered balcony above. The dwelling typology has 17 different types including several different flats, duplexes and triplexes that range in size from one-bedroom flats to three bedroom triplexes. Most of the one-bedroom flats are on the top floor; however, some of the triplexes extend into this level where the top floor bedrooms have separate entry and exit. Every apartment has bi-fold metal doors opening the full width of the dwelling, and most of the multi-floor dwellings have two story high volumes while some have two-story high doors.

What I loved most about Nouvel’s design was its solution to the usual space requirements of access and cars: raised on pilotis it provides covered parking at a slightly depressed lower level freeing up the car-allotted space above for gardens; and using external stairs and horizontal walkways on the northside, covered with his maritime-inspired canopy, left more space for the apartments and the all of the southside for extensive private balconies. Simple but ingenious!   ‘To Nouvel's chagrin, the idea that savings in construction costs resulting from the industrialized building techniques and minimal interior finishes would be passed along to the tenants in the form of much more spacious, generous dwellings was never realized and apparently rentals were determined by floor area instead of building costs.’ (http://architecture.about.com)