[PROJECT UNDER PUBLIC ENQUIRY - DELIVERY IN 2025]

For a long time, in this part of northern Lausanne, the landscape was bucolic, green and rural, resembling the television epic with the Ingalls family in The Little House on the Prairie. The land that interests us accommodated a classic and unpretentious country house, bordered by agricultural fields. Set deep in the countryside. Today, the Olympic capital is extending its urban matrix far from its nerve centre, and the plot in question is now located... in the middle of the city. Change of reality, change of paradigm.

With the idea of adapting to these new normalities, the stated objective is to move from a single-family house to a family property with apartments. Accessible properties, six in total, each benefiting from their own unspoilt views. Built with a ground floor and two upper floors, the project therefore offers two properties per level, with four apartments – from 3.5 rooms to 4.5 rooms – and two penthouses of 2.5 rooms. Some are made up of 110 m² while others have approximately 70 m². They are generous, especially in their outdoor spaces.

Compact and limiting its footprint as much as possible, this microblock of apartments is Minergie P* certified. Having been built around a concrete stairwell, it features a wooden frame, which allows the building's carbon footprint to be halved and gives it a certain visual lightness. The facades are ventilated using corrugated Eternit sheets, and the building is heated using a geothermal heat pump. The flat roofs are covered with photovoltaic panels and feature strange chimneys, ducts to put it simply, which allow a natural ventilation system to be provided to each of the apartments. While breaking free from the constraint of mechanical ventilation, they are a clear nod to the 700 “badguirs” of the Iranian city of Yazd – a city renowned for its temperature records, as many traditional towers which, before the invention of electricity, made it possible for homes to remain cool and ventilated.

Privacy being of major concern, each apartment is nevertheless largely invisible to the others through the use of screens which allow privacy without having to hide. To sum up, it is a little piece of the countryside situated in the middle of the city, where the advantages of the city and the countryside can be enjoyed, without sacrificing one for the other. Where the quality of the building and well-being must be able to be quantified in life bonuses.

* Minergie-P designates constructions with very low energy consumption and meets the maximum requirements in terms of quality, comfort and energy, thanks in particular to an excellent building envelope.