Notre Dame de Bon Secours

Paris, France

Photo © Sergio Grazia

Architects: Atelier Zündel Cristea

Location: Paris, France
Year: 2014

Here we are in the heart of Paris, and in the 21st Century. The people who will reside in this establishment come for the most part from the surrounding neighborhoods; they were born and have lived their lives in Paris.

We propose an urban project whose scale is consistent with its surrounding neighbors; a modern project, taking note of its era, as well as of the progressive changes in elderly care and housing practices.

The structured heterogeneity of the real world is reflected in our project by means of a spatial horizontal stratification. To control the scale of the establishment's whole through a legible, distinct, and compact distribution of its three principal areas, the nursing home, FAM, and the nursery, we decided on the following spatial organization: the ground floor is reserved for an entrance area, communal spaces, and for the nursery, the first two floors are reserved exclusively for housing, the third floor for large communal terraces as well as for organized activity space, the fourth and fifth for the nursing home's housing units.

The interface between residential life and life outside comes into play in the project's human-scale social apparatus: communal, open gardens and terraces, views facing the outside, halls with recreational facilities and organized activities, hairdressers, spas.