The "Espace Ambroise Croizat" previously housed a daycare center and, over the decades, underwent gradual transformations, featuring disparate buildings that reflected different architectural periods. Instead of erasing this history, TAUTEM Architecture chose to work with what already existed: revealing its qualities, respecting its limitations, and inscribing a new story within a pre-existing structure.
From the street, the restored facades, the portico, and the copper sign make the building's presence visible and subtly reaffirm it, engaging in a dialogue with the surrounding buildings. Beneath the restored arches, the community grocery store enlivens the ground floor and opens the space to the city. On the garden side, the extension develops an architecture that integrates the interior and exterior, enveloping a fresh, revealed, enriched, and largely open space.
"Espace Ambroise Croizat" TAUTEM Architecture. Photograph by Luc Boegly.
It forms a protective envelope that extends the spaces outwards, especially through the portico that opens onto the garden, creating a fluid transition between the public space and the welcoming area. The reopened historic arches restore depth and a welcoming dimension to the ground floor.
The low-carbon concrete structure, with its in-situ concrete vaults that reinterpret the geometries of the Arceaux family, frees up the floor plan, promotes reversibility, and grants the third space a great capacity for evolution. Located beneath the vault overhangs, the wooden facades engage in a dialogue with the mineral surfaces, contributing to a restrained, warm, and enduring architectural language.
"Espace Ambroise Croizat" TAUTEM Architecture. Photograph by Luc Boegly.
This relationship between interior and exterior, the presence of vegetation, and the bioclimatic design strategies firmly place the project within the realm of Mediterranean architecture. Around a shared garden that preserves existing trees, walkways, concrete vaults, and timber-framed facades compose an architecture adapted to the climate, open to light, vegetation, and collective use. Thermal mass, solar protection, and natural ventilation directly contribute to user comfort and environmental quality.
The entire project is based on the transformation of the existing structure. The preservation of existing structures, the reuse of local materials, low-carbon concrete, bio-based materials, and soil remediation all contribute to a logic of structural and climate-responsiveness. Photovoltaic energy production allows for a positive energy balance (BEPOS).
"Espace Ambroise Croizat" TAUTEM Architecture. Photograph by Luc Boegly.
A focus on care and support permeates the entire approach. Proportions, natural light, materials, and environments all contribute to creating an architecture of care, attentive both to the quality of life of the staff and to welcoming people with diverse life experiences. The proposal asserts that spaces intended for disadvantaged communities deserve the same architectural rigor as any cultural or institutional center. Here, spatial quality becomes a tool for welcoming, restoring, and including.
