70 Social Housing & 3 Shops

Architects/ GELIN LAFON, architectes

Area/ 4,844 m2

Location/ Paris, France

Photography/ Filip Dujardin

Windows with a Rear View (70 Social Housing & 3 Shops)

GELIN LAFON, architectes

The agency decided to create a building turned in on itself, its courtyard, its residents, a sort of little social utopia, a modern co-operative where people live and share a piece of the town. The project stands in the Pompadour urban development zone, a neighbourhood with an orthonormal and regular design with buildings lining a secondary road, criss-crossed by long green expanses. It is composed of two buildings, one with four storeys of housing over shops on Duranton Avenue; the other with three storeys of housing on Roland Roche Street. A tree-filled garden courtyard stands in the middle of the site on a hill level with the highest water mark and connects hallways and split-level housing from the garden level. The buildings house several types of flats. Small or spacious, penthouses and split-level, these flats offer various types of co-existence. And all share the ability to take full advantage of the expansive exterior spaces, a direct interface between the shared space at the heart of the structures and private space.

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Windows with a Rear View (70 Social Housing & 3 Shops)

These dwellings have nothing of the stigma of council housing, a sharp contrast to the public housing built in the sixties but for the same category of occupant. It offers genuine variations between the private and public spaces with meticulous attention paid to the walls of enamelled ceramic and broad woodwork. This lasting quality is not intended only for the client and shows that we as architects take very seriously an individual's self-image and the image one has of others through the place they live in.

GELIN LAFON, architectes

Windows with a Rear View (70 Social Housing & 3 Shops)

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Windows with a Rear View (70 Social Housing & 3 Shops)

GELIN LAFON, architectes

GELIN LAFON, architectes

The buildings house several types of flats. Small or spacious, penthouses and split-level, these flats offer various types of co-existence. And all share the ability to take full advantage of the expansive exterior spaces, a direct interface between the shared space at the heart of the structures and private space. Windows with a Rear View (70 Social Housing & 3 Shops) 187

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Windows with a Rear View (70 Social Housing & 3 Shops)

GELIN LAFON, architectes

GELIN LAFON, architectes

Windows with a Rear View (70 Social Housing & 3 Shops)

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