Lagare

The project concerns the design of a collective housing development consisting of four households.
The families behind this initiative share a desire to live differently—rethinking the way they inhabit space through a shared place, close to nature, and conducive to everyday interactions.

The environment is designed to foster connection between generations, within a human-scale setting built on cooperation, trust, and the willingness to share certain resources.

The housing units are compactly designed, optimizing private spaces while sharing several facilities.
Among the common areas, which are separate from the private homes, are a multipurpose hall, a workshop, cellars, a shared laundry room, bicycle parking, and technical installations.
This compact, shared layout encourages community living and contributes to more responsible use of space and resources.

The existing building is the starting point for this project.
It’s a small countryside house built between the 1970s and 1990s, made of red bricks and topped with fiber cement slates, located in the upper part of a large plot that slopes down to the Train river.

The project adds value to the existing site in two ways:
First, by reusing materials from the demolished structure, which are carefully dismantled and reintegrated into the new construction.
To meet programmatic and structural requirements, the above-ground portion of the house is to be demolished. A full inventory of available resources has identified materials suitable for reuse. Many recovered elements, including bricks, PVC window frames, sanitary equipment, and floor coverings, will be repurposed in the new design.

Second, the approach includes preserving the footprint of the existing building to minimize the new structure’s impact on the soil.
The central housing block is partially rebuilt on the existing cellar foundations. A second housing building is constructed as an extension of the first, and a shared hall is positioned at the entrance to the site.

The overall layout consists of three modestly-sized, aligned longhouses.
The two residential buildings, located in the center of the plot, each accommodate two households. This configuration reduces the total footprint of the development, ensures optimal landscape integration, and allows for a smooth connection between private access paths, outdoor areas, and communal spaces.