Living in collective housing in Nantes
Build collective housing in the city? Everyone is talking about it, some are getting started. Those of the apartment building located under the blue sky of the island of Nantes have successfully completed the course. Thanks to the Mericom Archi team of architects, five families built their homes in self-promotion in the heart of the Pays de Loire.
We were a few friends who wanted to buy an apartment in Nantes, to get closer to our friends without leaving the city center, says one of the initiators of the project. Both of us could not afford to buy an apartment or a house in the center of Nantes. So the solution ... It was to build an apartment building together and the meeting with the architects from Nantes, the team from the Merisim’s, did the rest. Absolutely, in fact!
The pragmatism of this group of friends sharing common values as well as a solid confidence in their team of Nantes architects paved the way throughout this adventure.
Building and finding land on which to build in Nantes is no easy task. The prices are exorbitant and we found ourselves in competition with the promoters ... We were interested in creating and realizing our own place of life, not to fit into the boxes provided by and for others.
The group is embarking on self-promotion. A rather rare and delicate approach, especially in legal and financial terms (see Mericom's post in the blog).
At the beginning the elected officials laughed at us! We were too early, today things have moved and the town hall of Nantes, to build its project, now reserves land for collective projects like ours.
The aspirants, helped upstream by the expertise of their Nantes architect, unearthed a wasteland on the island of Nantes, one of the most popular areas at the time of the city of the Dukes of Brittany. An island five kilometers long, embraced by two branches of the Loire, a stone's throw from the tram, the historic center and the train station. There was immediate unanimous support for the building land, of course the plot is small and imposes many urban planning constraints, but it also opens onto a vast urban landscape which promises optimum sunshine.
To densify the city, to do without a car, this is our way of being green!
Densify the city, to do without a car, this is our way of being green!
The presence of our architect from Nantes, Mérisim’s partner as a friend, mapped out the road, it is he who draws the plans, files the building permit and monitors the site until the keys are handed over. As part of the complete architect's mission, we really listened, we were heard and listened to!
When the building land was purchased, the collective, whose composition had changed over the years of research, had five households: a family of three, a couple and three singles. What unites us are our common values based on respect, love, fraternity, solidarity ... The social mix offered by this neighborhood, marked by its industrial and working-class past, pleases us very much!
An intuitive community is born, it decides not to write any rules. Our desire is to be together, not to sum up our different visions. We will see, in use, what should be put in place to adjust the cohabitation. Some self-promotion candidates want to decide everything up front and spend months listing what they absolutely care about. We can see immediately that they will not succeed. Collectively achieving a goal requires putting personal demands on the back burner.
As soon as the building land is identified, each household expresses its needs, its desires… The order is passed to Mericom Archi to place all these beautiful people and their dreams on the plot by combining proximity, privacy… And particularities. Slanted walls in one, a mezzanine and rounded walls in another, a movable partition here ...
The five households ask their Nantes architect to create five private terraces on the south sides of which they can talk to each other ... A roof terrace, a common room, a guest bedroom, a barbecue area, a bicycle shed, a storeroom for wood. heating… They agreed to equip the building with a geothermal heating system and a wind turbine on the roof, hemp fiber insulation…
Over the estimates for geothermal heating, hemp insulation ... In the name of the principle of reality, we have prioritized our initial choices ... The good bio-sourced insulation and the design of the building make it possible to considerably limit the heating needs. Two units use only a wood-burning stove, and some light it for guest enjoyment.
It is very good without heating!
To share costs, the small house in the courtyard houses a common laundry room, all of which have access to it by paying the price of their laundry.
A few weeks of drawing later a first project is presented to the group, a five-storey monolith out of the ground with a duplex apartment on the fifth floor and surprise, a small house on one level, in the courtyard, to the south of the plot. The heights imposed by town planning rules did not allow all the apartments to be created in the same building, the courtyard house was the solution. The ingenious solution found by the architect is adopted and the five housing units are distributed among the future owners.
The lots were awarded in two minutes, with no problem, the architect remembers, everyone recognized their space from the start!
To live happily, let's live together.
The building permit obtained and the acquisition of the building land definitively confirmed, the work begins. After a year of work, the neighbors of the neighborhood are invited to the inauguration, a small party is organized.
After these few years of cohabitation, the results are very, very positive. The manager in charge of the self-managed trustee retains the pleasure he has in sharing each other's knowledge and skills. Our group found a good balance between consciousness and unconsciousness.
Obstacles that could have been experienced as insurmountable were overcome thanks to the collective. The legal puzzle, in particular, could have derailed everything but our group was able to find solutions to the differences in financial means of each ...
Each accommodation has its own style, the atmosphere is very friendly ...
As a promise of the future, certain projects are on hold: a common library running up the entire height of the stairwell, the garden inspired by permaculture ... Others in reflection: organizing a car-sharing.
This project to build a car-sharing and self-promotion building is an experience that the Nantes architect considers radically new. Building collectively, without a promoter, is the ownership of land by citizens. It is somewhat reminiscent of the phalansteries of the 19th century, it is a civic act that induces new institutional relationships.
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