16a - Clichy-Batignolles

16a - 40 housing units in Clichy-Batignolles

3 Rue Marie Georges Picquart, Paris

This apartment building is part of the ZAC Clichy-Batignolles. This new city district is located near the long boulevard Pereire, a typically Haussmannian artery by its typology. For this project, the architects of the LAN agency (Umberto Napolitano and Benoit Jallon) decided to explore in a contemporary way two notions specific to the Haussmannian building: density and flexibility. The tapered silhouette of this dark and uniform building evokes the Flatiron Building in Manhattan or certain commercial buildings on Rue Réaumur.

Perfect extrusion of the triangular plot, the volume fully exploits all the land possibilities. The project introduces the idea that by emptying an architecture of its program, a building can generate a potential that accompanies urban evolutions and responds more easily to changes in use. The structure of the building is composed of both a load-bearing core, concentrating horizontal and vertical circulation, and window trumeaux. With a view to flexibility, the facades are drawn on 1m35, regular succession of empty and full, concrete and glass, they make the project very iconic. The animation of the facades resides in the presence of large loggias: they are a real extension of the interior living space towards the outside and contribute to ventilate the dwelling in summer. Arranged in such a way that they never overlap, they create a play of full and empty spaces that enliven the façade. With its black lacquered aluminum joinery and polished concrete panels, the building expresses both monumentality and luxury through its purity. An elegance enhanced by the horizontal golden bands framing the first floor, evoking the noble floor of the Haussmann building.

Their proposal is to pay homage to Paris, through an architecture that is in keeping with the logic of the city, but which also offers solutions to current and future problems. The building seeks to anticipate this mutation by proposing a perfect reversibility between residential and office buildings.