architect: inSpace architecture
location: Paris
year: 2015
The project at 73 boulevard de la Villette in the 10th arrondissement of Paris comprises 14 units of social housing for the SIEMP and a Mother and Child Welfare Center (Protection Maternelle et Infantile, or PMI) for the Department of Families and Infants (DFPE) of the city of Paris. The integration of the project into the lot demonstrates the intention to set up a building that assimilates the composition with the context, its morphologies and urban specificities, and thus designed as an element that reflects its environment. The building expresses two distinct aspects of reality: Life on the boulevard, and life in the heart of the city block. This duality is developed at various levels of the building’s conception. The façade on the boulevard de la Villette, with encumbered with more important acoustical constraints than the rest of the block, is in concrete insulated from the exterior, whereas the façade overlooking the calmer core of the block is comprised of a wood frame. The treatment of the façades was designed to reflect these two distinct ambiances: On the boulevard de la Villette side, the building’s smooth façade contrasts with adjacent façades. The desire to develop a harmonious relation with the other façades led the architects to borrow formal elements from them for a reinterpretation. This façade, a composition of a smooth image completely free of any ornament, takes advantage of the seasonal changes of the trees lining the boulevard, forming a backdrop for the constantly changing shadows, density of reflections and colors. The volumetry of the inner courtyard side is on the scale of a house, in a world protected from the agitation on the boulevard. La façade of the upper floors is in wood, a warm and natural material, which, in the context of the view of
the planted terraces, offers a comforting and pleasant vision to the building’s occupants.
Contractor: SIEMP
Architect: inSpace architecture
Engineer consultant: Igrec Ingénierie / TRIBU HQE
Surface: 1400 sqm
Cost: 2,5M€ before tax
Calendar: delivered in november 2015
Visuals: Hervé Abbadie
