JDS Architects have won a competition to design a youth centre for Lille, France.

The Lil/Euralille Youth Centre will comprise a contorted triangular building, housing a youth hostel, a kindergarten and offices within its three corners.

These three blocks will each feature cantilevered corners and are to surround a central triangular courtyard.

This courtyard will slope up to a roof garden above the kindergarten and step onto decks above the youth hostel.

This will be the first project in Lille by JDS Architects, who previously designed a cantilevered ski jump in Norway – see all our stories about the firm here.

Here's a little more information from the architects:

JDS Architects have just signed the contract to execute their first French project for the city of Lille.

Over the past twenty years Lille has become a European hub; a destination for business and congress, a great place to study and live and also a tourist destination.

It is a city with a turbulent history of conquest and reconquest, a heritage as an important medieval city and later on enjoyed and sometimes suffered the title of Northern France industrial capital.

Our project emerges from the idea of creating an urban catalyst, accommodating three distinct programmes on a triangular site.

By placing a program in each point of the triangle we offer maximum privacy while allowing them a closeness and continuity of space, organised around a garden, like a cloister of calm in the center of the city.

The lifting of the mass of the programme at the corners illuminates and activates the adjacent public spaces and creates a continuity from outside to inside of the building.

Project: youth hostel, kindergarten, office
Budget: 12.150.000 EUR

Type: Invited Competition
Size: 6.980 m2

Client: SAEM Euralille
Status: 1st Prize 2011

Location: Lille, France
JDS Partner in Charge: Julien De Smedt

Project Leader: Renaud Pereira
Team: JDS, EGIS, Agence Franck Boutté Consultants, SL2EC