Toulouse: the Occitanie architecture prize bends over backwards
The Occitanie Architecture Prize was awarded this Thursday, November 25, on the occasion of the Rendezvous of Architecture in Toulouse, to a quartet of modest and clever projects from the region.
Is it a coincidence or a desire to make a decision with the usual bombast of architectural prizes rewarding pharaonic projects? The jury of the Occitanie Architecture Prize has chosen to reward, this year, among a hundred candidates, a quartet of architectural achievements marked by their modest but ingenious, even clever character. This prize is offered every two years by the Maison de l’Architecture Occitanie-Pyrénées with the Maison de l’Architecture Occitanie-Méditerranée and the Regional Council of the Order of Architects, with the aim of promoting and rewarding architectural creation. contemporary quality in the Occitanie region.
Sustainable architectures
The professional jury, made up of Tiphaine Abenia, architect engineer from Lausanne, Julia Albani, architectural historian from Montreal, Nicole Concordet, architect from Bordeaux, Nobouko Nansenet
architect from Lyon, and Beka & Lemoine, filmmakers, distinguished two Toulouse projects and two creations in Lot and Aveyron. By isolating four
projects, the jury wanted, identifying “four attitudes, four ways of producing sensible architectures, carrying lasting meaning”.
Renovated suburb houses in Toulouse
The Toulouse firm Bast, already awarded in 2017, brought together two suburb houses with an extension for a former family home. We note the work on materials and transparency with a limited budget (225,000 euros). The other Toulouse project is the renovation of a detached house in two stages. The project illustrates a form of assumed politeness. The FMAU firm and Trames architectes produced goldsmith work within a budget constraint (30,000 euros).
Super Cayrou in Quercy
The Super-Cayrou project, by Encore Happy Architects, is a work of art refuge in dry stones, in the regional natural park of Causses du Quercy, which refers to the Occitan name of these piles of pebbles that dot the landscape, shelters of shepherd or vine also called caselles or gariotes. Here too, the budget is modest (64,000 euros of work) but the original purpose, with the desire to create types of “Windows on the landscape”, to invent a vernacular heritage and to offer the promise of nights under the stars. in the causses, on the Ways of Compostela.
Asprières municipal center (12)
Finally, the last winner of this original quartet, the Activity Center created for the town of Asprières, in Aveyron, by CoCo architectes and Hugues Tournier architecte. A larger budget (1.2 million euros) but measured, for this municipal center hosting multiple activities: nursing home, library, canteen, post offices and coworking space. At the foot of the medieval fort, two halls all in laminated wood and transparency, evoke with modernity the barns of the surrounding countryside.