Paris, France
Category: Affordable, Social, and Community Living Housing
Year: 2023
Architects: Christ & Gantenbein
Design Team: Emanuel Christ, Christoph Gantenbein, Jean Wagner, Arthur Clauss, Thibaut Dancoisne, Cloé Gattigo, Agnete Winsnes Astrup, Mathilde Berner, Bérénice Curt, Jan Hajek, and Nicolò Ornaghi
Collaborating Architects: Margot-Duclot Architectes
General Contractors: Bureau Veritas S.A., SETEC Bâtiment Paris, INEX, and AVLS accoustique
Client: RATP Habitat, Subsidiary of RATP Group
Photographers: Walter Mair and Florent Michel
Vaugirard Housing is a residential development in the city’s 15th arrondissement, which stands on top of maintenance workshops for Paris’ subway cars. Mixing urban complexity with the comfort of high-quality housing, it is a unique combination of infrastructure and city life, potentially becoming a new model for subsidized housing.
This project is a manifestation of a contemporary strategy to reinvigorate the city, as it rests above a remodelled subway maintenance workshop developed in parallel by Dominique Lyon Architects. This unique situation – combining an infrastructural environment with housing – instils new life, accessibility, and a sense of community, while ensuring the urban diversity of an evolving neighbourhood with a hybrid program.
Serving as connective tissue in the metropolitan fabric, the project’s presence is modest and humble yet resilient and progressive. Along with the workshop below and additional projects to be developed as part of a larger master plan, it introduces a new street in Paris that traverses a previously inaccessible part of the city. The project is inspired by research on Parisian housing types that Christ & Gantenbein conducted at ETH Zurich, which reveals the strategies used to create identity and optimize access to light and ventilation within the volumes in dense urban living.
The street façade is presented as a series of volumes characterized by setbacks and carved-out recessions resulting from typological rigor and richness, where limitations are acknowledged but simultaneously create a framework for invention in a sculpted volume with movement and rhythm.
The theme of overlapping functions shapes every aspect of the project, influencing the placement of entrance halls, staircases, and apartments, while also generating an undulating urban form that offers varied views, flexible layouts, and improved natural ventilation. The housing units are structurally independent from the industrial facility below, thanks to a system of spring boxes that absorb vibrations, allowing both programs to coexist without interference.
A distinctive metal façade wraps the building, challenging conventional housing materials. Steel with a transparent varnish preserves a raw, industrial quality and evokes the character of Parisian rooftops. Combined with the strictly repeated proportions of the fenêtre Parisienne, this approach reinterprets Haussmannian traditions—updating the city’s architectural language through familiar elements subtly transformed for contemporary use.
Despite working within the constraints of standard subsidized housing, the design avoids repetitive layouts. Instead, it delivers spatial richness through articulated, largely column-free plans that offer a broad range of orientations, diagonal and transversal views, and generous interiors. Every unit includes at least one balcony or loggia, enhancing both spatial quality and thermal comfort. These loggias, though unheated and not counted toward official floor area, act as climate buffers and extend the living space.
The enfilade sequence of rooms and the diversity of spatial connections through light and sightlines further elevate the experience of everyday living. Altogether, the project sets a new benchmark for social housing, where typological innovation and architectural precision converge to produce high-quality, dignified spaces in the dense city.
Bringing the human and neighborhood scales to the forefront, the building fosters a sense of community in a resilient and enduring way. Subsidized housing here becomes a vehicle for inclusion, shaped by cultural awareness, social responsibility, and environmental consciousness. Its typological relevance to the Parisian boulevard fabric strengthens this model of cohabitation.
Structurally, the reinforced concrete frame is paired with large prefabricated wooden facade elements. This use of wood serves a dual purpose: it lightens the construction and reduces the cost of superimposed volumes, while also improving the building’s ecological performance. A notable feature of the project is its rooftop urban gardening initiative. Residents are provided with gardening pots, encouraging them to grow herbs, vegetables, or flowers.
This modest yet impactful gesture promotes sustainable living, strengthens social ties, and turns the rooftop into a shared, productive space—an accessible green area that contributes to ecological transition and urban resilience.
Through its rational and measured design, the project also achieves something rare: the preservation of an industrial activity in the hyper-central context of Paris. By integrating production functions with residential use without conflict, the building challenges the prevailing trend of zoning segregation. It offers a compelling case for a productive and inclusive urbanism, proving that mixed-use environments are not only possible but vital for the future of dense cities.
