Diversity and Reuse

Over the course of a decade, Pantin, an industrial and working-class city, has transformed to the point of becoming the Greater Paris city where anything is now possible. Strongly marked by an industrial and working-class past, the city displays both social and cultural diversity. The entire challenge here is to envision a building that brings together a multitude of functions and a wide variety of uses within a constrained urban context: premises for students from the Nantes School of Fine Arts, a housing program of 50 adaptable units—30% of which are social housing—and finally, a production studio for artist Fabrice Hyber.

The envisioned architecture is designed in resonance with the city’s heritage through the use of moucharabieh brickwork on the facade. Added to this is the use and repurposing of red roof tiles for walls that welcome biodiversity all around the plot.