EDEN BIO – a project about urbanism and architecture

Eden bio Vignoles is a project on an entire Parisian housing block, situated in a picturesque and popular neighbourhood. The block is crossed by narrow alleys – a relic of the bygone “faubourg”.

Text by Edouard Francois
Edited by Tzvetana Chipkova
Photos by Nikola Mihov

The surrounding architecture is of low height and is constituted of little fragments that have a lot of charm. The program comprises a hundred new social apartments and ateliers for artists, some new community rooms and a small restaurant.

The urbanistic approach

of leaving the street frontage with its original small scale and densifying the centre is new in town. The neighbourhood has many associations whose opinions have been heard at numerous public consultations. Of course, I have been asked to favour the “house” style over the “apartment block” style – a phrase that makes the adjacent residents think of the atrocity of concrete...
The density of the program is situated in the centre, along the original alleys, where maisonettes and buildings with vegetal facades face each other. The materials used are those of the neighbourhood: humble. The ensemble can be seen as a contextual patchwork made of prefabricated red shingles, timber pillars, zinc, flower pots, copper, whitewash plaster and coarse concrete left rough.
Every house has its own facade, its own cladding to differentiate it from the rest.
The ensemble is held together by a ribbon of red shingles that wraps around it.
Facing the little houses, you no more see apartment blocks but instead a vegetal curtain veiling oblique exterior staircases which take you gently to the sky. The stairs lead to two apartments on each level. Each apartment has windows on both sides and a balcony to the South. The central building is soft because it is wrapped in greenery and timber garden stakes. Along its length, its height is stepped in order to better embrace the sloping topography.

The vegetal facade

is planted in the ground. Thousands of wisterias will climb on as many vertically-assembled stakes. Situated every two metres between the stairs and the balconies, this scaffolding of timber pieces will be gently colonized by plants.
I requested that very expensive biological earth be applied in very deep coats and protected during the entire construction period. Considering the price, everyone was very careful. At the end of construction, we planted biocertified, very small, almost invisible plants. The choice was based entirely on their capacity to live without any fertilizer or pesticides and to preserve their bio characteristics in a new landscape. The resulting image will be unpredictable, made of wild species that spontaneously complete our selection. In earth of such quality, the plants will become trees and bushes very rapidly. In five years, the result will be spectacular and impossible to obtain without the extravagant soil quality we have here.
Eden Bio is a project to be discovered, in several years, after maturing, like good wines.