Social Living

By Khris Kirk

With the growing population of the world and the expanding cities, people need places to live. At the beginning of the 20^th century, social housing arose as a means to house the large number of people moving to large cities from the countryside. Large apartment complexes, condominiums, and dorm rooms started to pop up everywhere. At the start of this architecture upbringing, the designs were plain and repetitive. However, after a while, the buildings started to reflect a more individual appearance. Another aspect that was a large influence of building these large apartment complexes was the cost of building them. Jean Nouvel’s Nemausus in Nimes, France, is a prime example of individual style of architecture and fairly cheap cost of building.  

Jean Nouvel was appointed to design a social living building by the mayor of Nimes. He started the project with the idea of giving the resident the maximum space to live in, and to make the apartment more functional in the way the resident actually uses the space. Before Nouvel designed his apartment complex, there was a method designing social housing that made the space not as comfortable for the resident. The bathrooms had no natural lighting; there were hallways, and tight spaces throughout the rooms. Nouvel thought these preconceived ideas of design were wrong and felt the need to design towards the liking of the resident. Therefore, he designed his social housing with the max amount of space and tons of natural lighting.

He went about making the max amount of space by designing the apartment without walls. The most common design throughout the apartment complex has one central shaft in the middle of the apartment that houses restrooms, water and heating, and storage space. Otherwise there is a continuity of space through the whole apartment. There is no defining line between public and private. Another way of making the space appear larger is having the north and south facades having walls of glass and movable, industrial doors. By having the minimalistic apartment, it allows for the tenants to create a space more personal to them.

Continuing on the minimalistic idea, Nouvel designed the whole building with concrete and prefabricated materials. The walls and structure of the building are made of concrete, which allows for the other elements of the building to be prefabricated materials like the fire station doors on the south façade. By having the walls and support be concrete, it allows for 30 percent more space within the apartments and saves money on the building costs.

Another aspect that was kept minimal was the decoration inside the apartments. There are none. All the walls within each apartment were left blank, showing the concrete. This makes the apartments appear unfinished, when they are complete. Nouvel wanted this idea to stay true through all the apartments that he made the tenants sign a contract that says they are not allowed to put anything on the walls or floors like wallpaper or carpet. However, the tenants rebelled and attacked the walls of their home with wallpaper and carpets. They felt the need to personalize their homes, and make the apartments feel less like a prison and more of an inhabitable space. Another down side to the apartment complete is that even though there was a lot of savings that went into building the Nemausus, the tenants have to pay 30 percent more for rent because they have 30 percent more living space.       

Overall, Nouvel has created a very well designed apartment complete by focusing on his minimalistic idea and making the apartment work best for the tenants.

Links:
Nemausus
Flexible Housing
Jean Nouvel-Nemausus