“It’s about enabling residents to adopt the space and make it their own”

Could you begin by telling us at what point in your career as an architect the Noème project emerged?

Jérémy Nadeau: I’m part of the generation that has seen the emergence of third spaces almost everywhere in France. We like the idea of creating spaces that can be repurposed and evolve in response to events. This type of project has taught me how to analyse buildings in terms of how they are used. And it’s that central concept of use that emerged foremost in the buildings designed for the new Covivio project in Bordeaux: Noème. Our brief was to create a new identity for a former office complex that had become rather dehumanised.

Building homes is undoubtedly the most difficult task of all. You have to understand how to create high-quality spaces with generous exteriors, and defend your ideas as every stage of the project despite the sometimes contradictory pressures imposed by different stakeholders. Above all, it’s about enabling residents to adopt the space and make it their own.

So how do you encourage that adoption?

Jérémy Nadeau: The essential connecting factor is the concept of shared space. If we get that wrong, even where the finished building is intrinsically high quality, we fail to deliver a major concept: the concept of threshold. How you enter your home and how you share the space. For the two buildings I worked on, we began by designing large double-height entrance halls integral to the public space where people would meet each other. We created these large volumes on the premise that they could be developed and dense, by working around the concept of ‘capable volume’. It’s up to future owners to evolve them.

It seems to me that the architect has a duty to bring forward a humanist concept, but that the real skill lies in understanding how to anticipate the potential transgression of these spaces. Such transgression is possible only when those spaces are well conceived and designed. And the same commitment to appropriation has guided us in the creation of a cultural space located opposite our practice. The fact that it was quickly christened ‘Gotham’ was itself proof of adoption by the young people from priority neighbourhoods who we train in architecture, photography, 3D modelling and public art.

How is the concept of urban regeneration changing the way you work?

Jérémy Nadeau: Full implementation of the new thermal regulations between now and 2030 will be crucial determining factors in everything we do. They require us to take a global view of energy, buildings and the life cycle of materials. I’ve never before felt this strongly about the power of what we do to change things. The rising generations are pushing us hard from behind. Vernacular architecture is making a strong comeback in colleges and universities. They want to understand how to work with biobased and geobased materials and how they can be combined. The engineers we work with also have very different skills.

The key issue now is how we’re going to transform the way we build. Rather than taking a purely capacity-focused approach to housing, we now need to look at it in terms of bioclimatic factors. The same also applies to existing buildings. It’s a specific way of working that will soon become the norm.

More precisely, what role do you see heritage playing in residential development today?

Jérémy Nadeau: I see building on our heritage as the key to everything. In today’s world, we need to approach things by taking account of what we already have. High ceilings, stone, joinery and shutters are all premium features. Starting with an existing stone structure with walls 60 cm thick is in itself a significant starting point. This initial diagnosis of the existing built heritage represents around 30% of any refurbishment project. But people are going to need training in order to do this. I hope that in the future, we’ll build bigger and less finished, by which I mean leaving volumes unfinished so that people can use the spaces to build their own lives. 

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