area 103 | Paris

architect: Edouard François

location: Paris

The block of houses is not situated in Haussmannian Paris with chic boulevards as is the Fouquet’s Barrière that I designed at the same time. Vignoles is situated in a picturesque and popular neighbourhood. The block is crossed by narrow alleys a couple of meters wide. They are a relic of the bygone ‘’faubourg’’ with its fruit gardens. The surrounding architecture is of low height and is constituted of bits and pieces, little fragments that have a lot of charm. An architecture to be lived, that has never been designed The program comprises a hundred new social appartments and ateliers for artists, some new community rooms and a small renovated restaurant. A specific architecture for  a specific context...I love indented streets with buildings of differing height with voids. These absences invite you to discover the interior of the housing blocks, filled with maisonettes and rabbit hutches. The only things added to the street are two greenhouses, in memory of the historic fruit gardens. They serve as mailboxes for the residents and must be the smallest street-facing constructions in all  of Paris! The urbanistic approach of leaving the street frontage with its original small scale and densifying the center is new in town. The density of the program is situated in the center, along the original alleys, where maisonettes and buildings with vegetal facades face each other. The materials used are those of the neighbourhood; poor. The ensemble can be seen as a contextual patchwork made of prefabricated red shingles, timber pillars, zinc, flower pots, copper, whitewash plaster and coarse concrete left rough. In this little labyrinth of narrow alleys I don’t want any entry hall or elevator but little city houses with their little gardens. Every window has a cantilevered sill made of Ductal. With this device, from the inside you get the impression of thicker walls. It can also accommodate flower pots, another of my hobbies... sweet home. Every house has its own facade, its own cladding to differentiate it from the others. The ensemble is held together by a ribbon of red shingles that wraps around it. Facing the little houses, no more apartment blocks but instead a vegetal curtain veiling oblique exterior staircases which take you gently to the sky. Thats all! From there, numerous points of view open onto the heart of the project.

architetto: Edouard François
cliente: Paris Habitat
programma: Housing under the title H&E ”Habitat et Environnement RT2000-15%”: 98 residences, 11 studios, 52 parking spaces
costo: 10.7 million euro
project manager (progettazione e costruzione): Julien Odile architect
architetto paesaggista: Sophie Barbaux
impresa: SICRA
indirizzo: Villas des Vignoles, XXème
foto: David Boureau