Fanny Léglise. For more than ten years, you have played a major role in the development of participatory projects within Aquitanis. Encouraging tenants to take part in the design of their homes by developing tools to help them feel a sense of appropriation is relatively unprecedented in the context of housing production in France. What is driving this appetite for such practices, from the perspective of the project owner, the residents and the architects? Why engage in participatory practices today?
Bernard Blanc. In France, since the second reconstruction and the Athens Charter, we have been placed in a position where we, as residents, have had no say. A succession of architects, recipients of the Grand Prix de Rome, designed homes based on what was considered modern comfort. Until Marcel Lods1 made his peremptory statement that “people need to be taught how to live, they don't know how”. Participation is a process of emancipation from this doctrine; it may also be a form of reparation.
Participatory architecture invites architects to embrace their societal role. They must invent new tools and approaches, producing new collaborative instruments that encourage resident participation. Large-scale models that can be manipulated, moved and dismantled are a perfect example of this. To implement the Locus Solus project2, , the architects at éo toutes architectures developed a large structural model that allowed future residents to insert their own homes into it to better understand the private and shared spaces. On the project management side, an Aquitanis employee invented a game to get residents involved. In Tout est paysage3, Belgian architect Lucien Kroll explained that this practice made it possible to add complexity to the project. In the catalogue4 of the exhibition of his work with Simone Kroll, he explains that in this way, they took into consideration external elements brought in by future users that they would never have thought of themselves.
Our world has become far too simplistic, and we are forced to make it more complex by asking occupants to explain how they will live in their homes.
Some architects, such as Lacaton & Vassal5 make their projects more complex in terms of living and spatiality, while also providing an economic solution.
On the contractor side, participation requires a review of the algorithms used in operational budgets because the cost structure is unusual. The complexity brings us back to a concept that has been lost sight of in the construction of collective housing: the basic structure. It allows budgets to be optimised and additional space to be gained at a lower cost. This is valid for certain types of housing, but for studio flats or studio flats with an extra room, it becomes difficult to work with complexity, for example to create dual-aspect flats. From 60 sq m upwards, I can offer an extra 10 sq m, which is what Jacques Lucan, Odile Seyler and François Leclercq6 were calling for during lockdown. The economics of the structure are the main focus of the project owner's work. In 2012, we came up with the idea of applying participatory design to 20% of the 600 homes produced annually by Aquitanis, setting up platforms that would allow for feedback. This was a real change of profession for the contractor.
FL. Based on your experience, what can you say about participatory projects today?
BB. When participatory projects are launched, 10% of future residents get involved, whether they are tenants or owners – as I noticed during operations carried out with Axanis, Aquitanis' residential ownership subsidiary. What's more, during co-design workshops, we realize how much we have been indoctrinated with standard plans; we find it difficult to imagine anything other than developer typologies or day-night partitions. In the case of projects such as VIM7 and Bengaline8, with Atelier Provisoire, we treated rental properties as if they were owner-occupied. We delivered a bare shell, with the possibility for everyone to choose their own layout. It took three workshops and the involvement of children to break out of the standard pattern. We asked ourselves, along with the architects: is it possible to imagine an open-plan layout that can be arranged as each person wishes? L'Atelier Provisoire came up with the idea of installing ceiling rails to support wooden partitions that meet acoustic standards, mounted on jacks and removable. The occupants, assisted by a carpenter, were thus able to create their own customised layouts. Some tenants had come up with a floor plan that was redesigned on site. They knew exactly what they wanted from their living space.
The resident-architect is someone who has the tools to truly create and organise his or her living space.
When we involve tenants in their future homes, they immediately think about what comes next. At VIM, they said , “You're installing this for us, but what will you do when we're no longer here?” You can sense a genuine concern for others. At Locus Solus, we said that we had to be as environmentally friendly as possible. The future residents then considered installing dry toilets for nearly 50 homes. At the next meeting, they thought about those who would come after them and realised that what made sense for them would not necessarily make sense for others. They then came up with the idea of reversible dry toilets, before abandoning this hypothesis. When it comes to home ownership, it seems to me that the issue of resale and the value of their property is holding back future owners from developing homes that are fully suited to their needs. Property ownership is a crucial issue in France. Everyone wants to own property, a trend strongly encouraged by the government and the media, which said: “You won't have a pension, so buy a property so you won't have to pay rent when you retire!”
FL. Throughout your projects, you have tested a number of measures that enable the creation of high-quality housing with shared spaces.
BB. The first issue is to create spaces where residents feel comfortable enough in their own homes that they can then open up to others. In my opinion, housing development takes place in three concentric circles. The first, for a contractor, consists of providing a solution to “being oneself/at home” by protecting residents from the gaze of neighbors, noise, etc. The second circle concerns openness to others. How can we create a desire to meet others? All sociological studies highlight the desire to be with others in dense urban environments, but in a space that is separate from one's “home”.
The challenge, then, lies in the spatial organisation of spaces, those reserved for the family and those devoted to meeting others, without obligation.
The book Voisiner9 clearly shows this link between “spatial proximity” and “social distance”. For a contractor, an architect, a landscape architect or a urban planner, the way we live as neighbors is the subject of the fabric of urbanity, at every scale.
In order to offer high-quality housing, it is necessary to develop dual-aspect layouts that provide bioclimatic benefits. This involves regulating horizontal circulation through passageways. These passageways raise issues around sightlessness, boundaries and thresholds. In Switzerland and Germany, passageways are being widened to overcome these problems. A number of measures can be taken to address privacy issues. For example, entrances to dwellings are no longer built in order to save space. They can be replaced by a rod placed one meter from the door to hold a curtain, as in brasseries, which protects against the gaze of neighbors passing by on the walkways. A double door can prevent intrusions while ensuring ventilation. The widening of passageways is a principle that could be adopted in France in social housing, where there is no need to sell these areas. It is more difficult in the private sector, where it is not possible to balance “lost” areas in the balance sheet.
Each device can be adjusted, together, to address each issue on a case-by-case basis, in consultation with the occupants.
Another common area that older people dislike is the entrance hall. Some complain about the constant flow of people in front of the letterboxes. One idea is to move them out of the way and add a bench. This transforms a space I don't want to go to into a place where I can meet others. That's how you create a friendly atmosphere.
The vegetable garden became a communal space. We are going to grow vegetables together, as in Oréa10 or Locus Solus. “You can't force people to go into the communal area,” a resident told me early one morning in the vegetable garden on the slab. At Locus Solus, the residents chose to host a Maison d’Assistantes Maternelles (nursery). This type of desire is completely beyond us. On the other hand, what is not beyond us is working on spatiality, on scales of space. We can also support residents in their technical choices, as we always do at Locus Solus. The residents chose to have only one lift but asked in exchange for a staircase that was better designed than usual and better lit. Together with the architects, we designed a staircase with round openings made of thick concrete, painted gold, a nod to Rem Koolhaas' house in Floirac. It is nice to think that Locus Solus has architectural connections with the Lemoine house. Similarly, VIM is reminiscent of Le Corbusier's Dom-Ino house or Jean Prouvé's Villa Métropole. In participatory collective housing, whether rented or owned, common areas incur operating costs. Participation must also include maintenance, which can be entrusted to residents' associations, which can be allocated an annual maintenance budget for the common areas and technical equipment they have chosen. For owner-occupied housing, we have envisaged the establishment of a solidarity-based syndic.
In the case of renovation in occupied sites, tenants cannot be deprived of their right to participate. They are the ones who have the “performance of living”, as explained by architect Christophe Hutin who worked on the transformation of buildings G, H and I in Grand Parc11 and the renovation of Beutre12. At Claveau13, architect Nicole Concordet also drew on the skills of the residents.
The third circle, after being oneself and being with others, which we gradually learn to adjust spatially, is being in the world. How can we grasp this scale? Through meeting digital specialists at symposiums, I realized that we couldn't deal with that part. Being in the world is the “habitel14“ – my whole world to myself in my phone – it's networks, travelling to the four corners of the globe. That's not part of our job.
FL. How do you legislatively ensure the participation of tenants whose housing has not yet been allocated?
BB. In law, there are loopholes and resources. We are implementing double allocation mechanisms to compensate for the fact that, a year earlier, situations (family composition, income) may have changed, which is rarely the case. For the Oréa residence, we wanted 50% of the occupants to be elderly or very elderly people living alone and 50% to be young households. A public housing provider is not allowed to impose this type of criteria, so we delegated all allocations to the local authority.
In France, 80% of the population is eligible for social housing, yet rents are too high even though we apply the government's scale.
The big social issue, which we find difficult to address, is providing suitable, quality housing for households in precarious or even very precarious situations. Since we are part of the exhibition Nouvelles saisons, self-portraits of a territory, our conversation about participation overlooks a crucial question: how can we ensure that people no longer have to move away from their place of work, often more than 60 kilometers away, in order to find housing, considering that we have even gone beyond the peri-urban to the perimetropolitan?
FL. A “perimetropolitan” area that often lacks places for sharing and meeting. If we move beyond the role of contractor that we have just discussed to talk about that of developer –which is also part of your experience– do you have an urban vision of the issue of conviviality?
BB. When you are a contractor, you build things within a very limited area. As a developer, you work in a slightly larger geographical area. In both cases, the issue of conviviality does not seem entirely identical, and yet whether we are working on a project for 40 homes in the city centre or an entire area to be developed, such as Bastide-Niel or Brazza, we are seeking to achieve exactly the same thing. Am I capable of creating the right conditions for living alongside others? Do I recognise others as my equals? Am I willing to live next to them, can I tolerate them? Do I mistrust them?
A city that values proximity and conviviality needs places that serve as roots. One of the best ideas would be to rely on schools. They should be open to everyone. They are located at the right distance from residential areas to become anchors for neighbourhoods, serving as libraries, meeting rooms, wedding venues, party venues, etc. The rest of the neighbourhood's activity would follow. If a shop owner sees that there are lots of people in a school on Saturdays, they will set up shop nearby.
In our hyper-consumerist society, we don't need more shops closer to home; what we need are places that encourage interaction, including with the natural world. That's what we're lacking: connections.
Interview by Fanny Léglise, 13 October 2025.
- Cité dans P.-H. Chombart de Lawe, Famille et habitation. Sciences humaines et conceptions de l’habitation, CNRS éditions, 1959 (1ère ed.). ↗
- Projet participatif en locatif social, 46 logements sociaux, locaux communs, maison d'assistantes maternelles, salle polyvalente, ferme urbaine à Bordeaux, 2019. ↗
- Paru en 1999, réédité en 2012 chez Sens & Tonka. ↗
- Sous la direction de Patrick Bouchain, Simone et Lucien Kroll, une architecture habitée, Actes Sud, 2013. ↗
- Co-concepteurs avec Christophe Hutin et Frédéric Druot de la réhabilitation des 530 logements sociaux des immeubles G, H et I de la Cité du Grand Parc, Bordeaux, 2013-2017, maîtrise d’ouvrage : Aquitanis. ↗
- Voir la tribune « La taille et la qualité des logements doivent être un chantier auquel nous devrons nous atteler » parue dans Le Monde du 24 avril 2020. ↗
- Quatorze logements évolutifs, Bordeaux, 2017. ↗
- Neuf logements collectifs, Pessac, 2016. ↗
- Sous la direction de Laurent Besse, Albane Cogné, Ulirke Kampl et Stéphanie Sauget, Voisiner. Mutations urbaines et construction de la cité du Moyen Âge à nos jours, Presses universitaires François Rabelais, 2018. ↗
- Résidence intergénérationnelle de 26 logements, Le Bouscat, éo toutes architectures, 2014. ↗
- Op. cit., opération avec Lacaton & Vassal et Frédéric Druot. ↗
- Réhabilitation de 93 logements, Mérignac-Beutre, 2025. ↗
- Réhabilitation de 245 maisons habitées, Bordeaux, 2025. ↗
- Dominique Boullier, Sociologie du numérique, Armand Colin, 2019 (2e édition). ↗