La Chesnaie neighborhood in Saint-Nazaire is a symbol of 1970s urban planning. Towers and linear buildings make up a low-density landscape located between the sea and the city center. In spite of its many advantages, today it is a decaying territory which has lost part of its appeal.

To face this problem while keeping the theory of refurbishment as the main option instead of demolishing-rebuilding (an approach initiated in the Bois-le-Prêtre Tower in Paris), the intervention proposed is a sustainable scheme by which one of the towers is radically transformed through the refurbishment of the 40 existing apartments and the addition of 40 new ones, inserted in its facades. With an optimized construction system, without having to intervene on the structure and organization of the building, this strategy is applicable to other buildings in the neighborhood, and would allow creating 250 new housing units and upgrading 312 existing ones, without reducing the area of the vast central garden. Being the main green space of a high-density quarter, this large garden can become a communal space for civic activities, instead of being an urban void of scarce use.