Winners of the Archi Jeunes architecture competition organized by the Valode & Pistre agency

The Valode & Pistre architectes agency has launched a major competition around sustainable housing, dedicated to students in architecture schools and young graduates under one year old.

Archi Jeunes to live, tomorrow

Beyond the health and economic shock it causes, the COVID crisis is changing our vision of many aspects of collective and individual life. It will have a long-term impact on our behavior and in particular those related to our way of living. Simultaneously with this crisis, the awareness of the effects of global warming and of the pollution of the planet due to human activities is more and more widely shared by the population.

One of the consequences of this pandemic will have to be the imperative to take into account, in the design of the habitat, new health, social and environmental expectations, which were strongly revealed during this crisis.

The architects Denis Valode and Jean Pistre think that it is necessary and useful to open the debate to a new generation of architects, to imagine new forms of habitat. Also aware of the difficulties of professional integration of this young generation, directly impacted by the effects of the health crisis (virtual absence of internships, distance training, etc.), they wished to take concrete action to reach out to the talents of tomorrow.

By organizing the “Archi Jeunes” prize, the Valode & Pistre agency wishes to give a voice to architecture students at the end of their studies or who have recently graduated, who intend to contribute to this development.

Imagine an innovative collective housing

The expected architectural project was an innovative collective housing proposal providing answers to the observation of the inadequacy of housing and their environment, as well as to the aspirations that emerged during the COVID crisis and of confinement in particular: contradictions between professional, school and family life, between collective life and distance, between confinement and aspiration to contact with natural elements and vegetation as well as the spread of ecological concerns.

The context, location, urban characteristics (density, dimensions, etc.) and the choice between rehabilitation and new construction were left to the appreciation of the candidates.

The laureats

1st Prize: ASSIA GHANI & MÉLINA NDOUMBE

Workers' houses, Roubaix

This is a regeneration project for a district made up of workers' houses typical of Flanders. The objective is to develop extensions, to structure associations of volumes, to redevelop the use of gardens to define a habitat adapted to new living conditions.

2nd Prize: ZINEB BENNOUNA & MARYLOU MACHECOURT

In the kêr of tomorrow, Dakar

The project proposes the development of urban housing in the poorest districts of Dakar. Made up of a group of housing units assembled around the water resource with concerns for self-sufficiency and conviviality. The implementation of the construction brings forgotten traditional techniques up to date, such as the Nubian earthen vault.

3rd Prize: DIAEDDINE KHALED

Premalliance, Grenoble

This project consists of the rehabilitation / transformation of a prefabricated tertiary complex from the 70s. The spaces are reconfigured to create panoramic housing with loggias and an unaffected space.

4th Prize: TELMO ESCAPIL-INCHAUSPE

What goes up must come down

The project consists of the construction of two extensions in the form of transparent towers in the unused space of a social housing residence in Paris. New constructions bring the possibility of living outdoors, in direct relation to the elements.

5th Prize: LOUIS GIBAULT

Tour circuit - Short circuit

It is about the project of a tower made up of a stack of individual houses - a densification with weak influence. It is a new typology of habitat which associates diversity, flexibility and which is conceived as an ecosystem.