Paris
2019
@ar2barchitects + @ponthieusophie
According to the daily newspaper «Le Monde», which quotes a report by Parisian notaries dated 26 July 2019, the average price per square metre in Paris has crossed the symbolic line of €10,000. Faced with this new record, the proposal entitled «The Village» questions the functioning of our society. The objective is to create a system that could be similar to the functioning of a village in order to respond to the social, economic and ecological problems that affect our current society. Social: integrate a multi-programmatic logic into the whole project in order to recreate a social network with an organization operating at the level of the building and local services. Economy: Create an economic model within the building based on the integration of a programmatic percentage including offices, shops, tourism in order to meet the high speculative demand and offer a significant number of decent housing at an affordable price. This economic model makes it possible to find a balance between a viable programme and housing in order to create a circular system for its financing. Ecology: The creation of a social fabric with a local and circular functioning allows many advantages such as the sharing of services, waste management, the development of new types of public transport.
The proposal breaks free from the dense urban fabric of Paris by creating a bridge building that allows it to be installed in many sites such as the Seine, the Périphérique, or even railway lines. This strategy offers an opening on the possibilities of building and densification of the city in order to avoid the growing urban. The building is based on a modular system to allow greater flexibility between the different programs, to facilitate its implementation and its reproducibility in the different sites. The module is a 4.80-metre square based on Luis Kahn’s system with life spaces and technical spaces integrated into the thickness of the structure in order to facilitate the modularity of the different types of dwellings. The prefabrication of the module in cross laminated timber wood is part of a logic of environmental respect and ease of implementation. In the case of a construction on the Seine, the modules can be transported directly by boat. The proposal aims to question the production of collective housing through research work at the urban, building or housing level.
