Cure itself, Find itself, share

The project is a healthcare center with therapeutical housing and a participative restaurant. It has the goal to reunify a left behind neighborhood, Montanou. The project creates a daily needed health facility where inhabitants are afford to meet each other in new sharing situations. A dynamic place is created in this forgotten part of the city.

Limits raised at the scale of the neighborhood draw the parcel geometry : the canal and the railway. The site is like a terrace of Montanou, turned to the historical city and backed by the hills. Regarding the lack of doctors in this area, a health facility in this zone seems to be indispensable. So, one part of the project’s program is a health center. It is composed by doctors, medical auxiliaries and pharmacists. Health professionals work here in synergy. It can be the place where there is prevention too, a meeting point in Montanou where inhabitants know they can talk to someone. ?Post-cure housing is associated to this structure. This accommodation proposes medical, educative and psychological support. It is for a short staying and permits an accompaniment to autonomy. The idea is to find back a social life after a psychiatric treatment. To valorise the residents, there are collective activities, and a common project. They can learn how to cook in the community restaurant, working under the supervision of an educator, readapting themselves to the city. Montanou inhabitants and workers come there to eat in a healthy way. This is a new place of meeting for people who share a same territory: their neighborhood. The community kitchen can be used by groups and associations too. ?The project is a range contained between the canal and the railway. It leans back in the hills and addresses itself to the city of Agen. The parcel has three different topographic levels. Each one corresponds to a more or less public status. This helps to implant the three programs. ?Post-cure housing has to deal with very private spaces, so, it develops itself along the impasse. Apartments are oriented towards the hills but can enjoy a very privileged view of the canal. ?The healthcare center is on the middle level. It has to be easily reached by everybody. In fact, it deals with a really strong link with a terrace park created in the project.?Those equipments share one lobby and are in touch by an interface which is porous or not, empty or occupied.?Finally, the restaurant is really near the canal, reinforcing the public life created by the water.