Social Housing in Paris / Frédéric Schlachet Architecte

Architect: Frédéric Schlachet Architecte
Location: Paris, France
Client: SNI – SAGI
General Contrator: AMT
Project Area: 1,650 sqm
Budget: 3,370,000 €
Project Year: 2010
Photographs: Frédéric Schlachet

This project was initiated by the Paris hospitals group (AP-HP) with the aim of optimising its property development in the city programming a development including businesses and housing solutions for its staff. The development is attributed to SAGI for building and exploitation.

In this part of the 14th district in Paris there are disused quarries underground. The building has its foundations on 25m columns above underground galleries which have been filled in.

The complex is situated behind an existing building which has been partially reconstructed and is set back from the road occupying an interior situation surrounded by other buildings. It shares an underground car park with a neighbouring building (by an extension) negating the need to create a separate access. It also benefits from a right to overlook neighbouring properties, instrumental (essential) for the volumetric aspect and the spatial organisation of the project.

The buildings are directed onto two gardens: one serving the general organisation and layout of the plot as a whole, the other ensuring an opening (including right to overlook neighbouring properties) and breaking from the pattern of gable walls that the other buildings present.

The ground floor constitutes a base, accommodating the commercial activity and the communal premises. The apartments are laid out over this base, their disposition taking into account the complex boundaries of the plot the restrictions relating to the neighbouring plots. Here, the architecture plays with volumes, with changing scales and empty spaces via which the flats, each one different, find their apertures, their viewpoints, their light.

The bare concrete, rough, stony or smooth is omnipresent. It is this material which allows the play of volumes and contrasts with the second layer of (created by) the windows, ironwork and smooth, abstract shutters.