In Eure, the Renaissance of Phoenix Houses – Liberation

What solutions offers architecture to adapt to the unpredictability of the world, rethink the existing and imagine new ways of living in space? A file carried out in partnership with the French Institute on the occasion of the Venice Architecture Biennial 2025. All articles are to be found here.

« They were colanders. We couldn’t continue like this! «  With one hand, Eric Joly shows the dapper houses of the Hameau de l’Andelle, in Val-de-Reuil (Eure), where he has lived for more than thirty years with his partner. Difficult, behind the colored coating, the new raised terraces and the wooden cladding, to identify the original Phoenix houses, built at a time when the energy arbitrations were not the same, and when a 5 cm thick concrete facade was less. It must be said that in recent years, the HLM district has made a real moult. The rehabilitation carried out at the initiative of the social landlord La Siloge, supported by the ANRU, local communities and Europe, ended last fall.

For tenants, it is a release. « We feel the heat, and we save gas! »exclaims a resident who details: his invoice went from 230 euros to 68 euros monthly. The priority was given to the insulation of roofs and facades, to break with the energy precariousness of the inhabitants. Positive collateral effect, acoustic comfort soothes the life of the neighborhood. « When you live happy at home, when the noises of adjoining housing or outside are no longer a nuisance, then your neighbor is no longer your enemy in public space »observes the architect Philippe Madec, who designed the project. Above all, the second life of these Phoenix houses, symbols of the suburban dream and its pitfalls, shows that rehabilitation often costs less than shaving everything to rebuild new. « And it’s also less energy, less resources, less nuisance … »

In the neighborhood, the work carried out goes far beyond the renovation of housing. « We have the impression that we have given air to the streets », smiles a passerby. It is true that we breathe well and this spring morning, the yellow, red and white pavilions bordered by pedestrian alleys and greenery evoke a haven of Norwegian peace. The metamorphosis is not unrelated to the construction, a few steps away, Noées eco -neighborhood, Rewarded in 2018 of the Silver Award Prize in the urban and landscaping category. « Before, it was a swamp », recalls Eric Joly in front of all 98 social housing units (including 14 houses in rental-accession), out of the ground a few tens of meters from his pavilion.

Designed by the same architectural firm of Philippe Madec in a requirement of energy sobriety, this eco -neighborhood gives pride of place to shared, associative and public spaces (covered hall, gardens, chicken coop, crèche, boiler room with wood …), but also with plants and water: ties have been dug to allow to absorb the nearby Eure floods. « Everyone knew that Noés made people happy »welcomes the architect, to whom the Siloge asked to decline the formula of this success in the neighboring district of the hamlet of the Andelle.

Mission accomplished. Around the Phoenix Houses (a tiny sample of 450,000 built on France, which have sometimes been purely and simply destroyed), 12,500 plants of more than fifty different species were planted – alders that grow on the banks of rivers, hawthorn, broom, marshes … The hamlet of the Andelle found its link (now five minutes walk from a pedestrian walk) and a tranquility evocative of the Norman bocage, which contrasts with the recent past. This is one of the pride of Denis Comont, a landscaper of the project, which notes the importance of having partially designed the soils. Previously, the neighborhood was bituminized, “Phagocyté by automotive use at the expense of pedestrian functions, which were summed up in the steps of the motorist descending from his car just in front of his door. The link with the environment was lost: we could have been everywhere else ”.

Of course everything is not perfect at the hamlet of Andelle: the inhabitants, proud of their neighborhood and eager that it remains in the best possible condition, point here a portal which wedges, there traces of humidity (a company must assess this). Pottillant? Speed, rather. Val-de-Reuil is not just any municipality. Halfway between Rouen and Mantes-la-Jolie, the youngest of the new cities projected to its foundation, in 1973, to welcome 140,000 Rolivalois on the horizon of the 2000s. But nothing happens as planned: at the turn of the 21st century, the young city has only 13,000 inhabitants, and 96 % social housing. The Renault factory and the expected middle class have never come: for Val-de-Reuil, the Thirty Glorious Years stopped too early. Today, the city intends to get rid of its image as a « city of Soc case », and allow residents whose income is progressing to stay in Val-de-Reuil, which now has « only » 60 % of social housing. An accession system allowing tenants of the Andelle hamlet to acquire their accommodation should soon be launched. Eric Joly is interested, but careful: he expects detail from the case. One thing is certain: he feels good here, at home, and he will not move.