Located to the east of the River Garonne in Bordeaux, across from the city’s UNESCO World Heritage historic centre, Ilot Queyries, a courtyard apartment building providing 308 homes – including 163 for social housing – parking, commercial space, and a rooftop restaurant in an intimate urban setting with plenty of light, air, and a large collective green space. The project is envisaged as a test-bed for the principles of the neighbouring Bastide-Niel masterplan, also designed by MVRDV, which aims to combine the virtues of Bordeaux’s UNESCO World Heritage historic city – intimacy, surprise, and liveliness – with the density, ecology, light, and comfort of the modern city. Ilot Queyries thus adopts the same approach as the Bastide-Niel masterplan: the building fills the site to its boundaries, lending an intimate feeling to the streetscape, while the roofs are arranged into carefully calibrated slopes to provide maximum ventilation, daylight, and sun to the building itself and to its neighbours. The result, designed in partnership with local architects Flint, is a large, irregularly shaped courtyard building almost 200 metres long. At 5,200m2, the large courtyard provides a park-like space for the residents; located one storey above ground level, it also hides the residents’ parking below. The building responds to its surroundings on all sides: on the south-eastern end of the building, sections as low as one storey relate to the low-rise neighbours, while on the north-east, facing the river, it rises as high as nine storeys. At this high point, a glass crown houses a restaurant with views of the river and the historic centre of Bordeaux beyond. CREDITS Architect MVRDV Founding partner in charge Winy Maas Partner Bertrand Schippan Jeroen Zuidgeest Design team Nils Christa Marie Saladin Thomas Boerendonk Roxana Aron Marco Gazzola Adam Mierzwa Florian Hoanen Antoine Ceunebroucke Michael Labory Nicolas Land Charlotte Kientz Rouba Daham Sarah Sioufi Visualization Antonio Coco Paolo Mossa Idra Kirill Emelianov Tomaso Maschietti Constanza Cuccato Copyright MVRDV Winy Maas, Jacob van Rijs, Nathalie de Vries Partners Co-architects: Flint Landscape Design: Sabine Haristoy Photographs: © Ossip van Duivenbode