Social Housing, Paris

Christ & Gantenbein associated to Margot-Duclot Architectes
for RATP Habitat
Dominique Lyon, coordinating architect

Vaugirard Housing is Christ & Gatenbein architecture office's first project in Paris, here associated to local partner Guillaume Margot-Duclot. Mixing the complexity of the city with the comfort of high-quality housing, it is a unique combination of infrastructure and urban life, with the potential to become a new model of social housing. Resulting from an in-depth research on Parisian housing's typologies carried out these last years by Christ & Gantenbein, the apartments are specific and innovative: the cellular appartement organisation and the redents catch the light, the rhythm of the Parisian window in a skin of zinc inspired by surrounding roofs, a prefabricated wood system which brings together sustainability, process and modularity. As a manifestation of a contemporary strategy to reinvigorate the city, the project’s volume rests on top of an active subway maintenance workshop developed by the architect Dominique Lyon, whose office is also in charge of the urban project which, by creating a new street redefines the perimeter of a plot in the city’s 15th arrondissement and makes it a new Parisian district mixing housing and activities.