Villiot-Râpée

Paris, France

The site surrounding Villiot-Rappée is fairly bleak and it is dominated by the shadow of a recently completed block of flats along the Seine.

As the last to arrive, we were free to do almost as we liked. We wanted to invent something new to counter these unflinching walls, to pierce the solid mass, disrupt the status quo and introduce some movement. The housing blocks (one 7 storeys above the ground floor, the other 11 storeys) rise up from two separate plots of land.

Yes, but they are linked together by a public space: a community park. They communicate and are hybrids of each other. We designed them as stacks of artificial ground levels, blurred their silhouettes by twisting them and erased their outlines by playing around with different materials and reflections. 

Alternating balconies create a spiral effect. Seen from inside, meshing and coloured glass surfaces create a pleasant feeling of privacy, a “contained atmosphere”. We used the proximity and distance between the two plots to avoid neighbours invading each other’s privacy.

We used weight-bearing façades and a central core, which houses the structure’s flows, staircases and lifts, to offer the future occupants large corner living rooms and make the floor-plan as open and flexible as possible. So their usage might change? They are flats for now, but tomorrow, who knows? We anticipated potential changes to their function by making it possible to recycle the space.

Program
Construction of 62 social housing apartments + activities centre

Location
Villiot-Râpée
19 Rue Villiot
Paris 12, France

Schedule
Delivery: 2011

Client
Paris Habitat

Project management
Lead architect: Hamonic+Masson & Associés

Engineering
All trades: SIBAT, environmental: Franck Boutté

Lanscape designer
Pena & Pena

Photographer
Sergio Grazia + Frédéric Delangle

Cost
8,3 M€ excl. tax.

Floor Area
5 120 m²

Environmental approach 
City of Paris Climate Plan
H&E Profil A Certification
Qualitel Millesime 2005 certification
BBC Effinergie
Green building site
Vegetated roof
External isolation
Photovoltaic panels
Thermal bridge breakers

Team
Lisa Cépisul