Paris, 12th arrondissement, Quai de la Rapée.


The Villiot-Rapée site display an austere landscape dominated by the last completed building, obstructing the link with the banks of the Seine. For the past twenty years or so, the Villiot-Rapée block, located at the corner of rue Villiot and quai de la

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Rapée, has been the subject of a demolition-re-construction project orchestrated by Paris Habitat.
When we took on the project, we almost had carte blanche. Faced with these frozen walls, the two tours we had to refurbish were made to « invent something else: to break the mass, to break the stagnation, to create movements. » (Hamonic+Masson). If the dwellings were developed on two independent blocks (8 and 11 floors), thanks to their situation they could be join together by a public space, such as a collective garden.
The project shares this Parisian landscape with large-scale buildings. They dominate the territory by their size and the flows they generate. The two towers are masked by office buildings, and can only be seen surreptitiously from the Quai de la Rapée, through a gap in the soulless row of recent housings.
The isolation of the project allows it to escape from an austere landscape saturated with out-of- scale constructions. School facilities, health, proximity of transports border this cloister and together create an autonomous system of which the Villiot Rapée is the centre. This position of isolation brings spatial advantages: protection from the noise of the city, a domestic scale to the site, but also generosity of ground spaces which mean that sky is visible from everywhere : light flows in.
With load-bearing facades and a central core dedicated to vertical circulation and flow, the structure offered occupants spacious corner living rooms and a "decompartmentalizable" space. Existing floors were superposed like never- ending stratified artificial floors, deconstructing the silhouettes by their shift, erasing their contours through the play of materials and reflections. Hamonic and Masson's project was characterized conceptually and plastically by these external extensions that encircle the building. These balconies, combined with an absence of cellars and of general space, became the storage showcase of the inhabitants. The appropriation here was not voluntary but constrained. The cumbersome spaces and views made it impossible to take advantage of these external spaces. They became supports for screens, fences and other stretched tarpaulins to avoid the vis-à-vis between the two towers transforming their intended show in an exhibitionist scream.
The projet of Hamonic and Masson which we refurbish is one more object thrown to the city. Taking advantage of a clear site, the project is a prey to the built belt that surrounds it. All eyes are on it. Its inhabitants suffer from these impediments to life and protect themselves from them by saturating their balconies with personal belongings. The sculpture becomes the showcase of the storage room stuff. We pack the building. A veil made of steel mesh envelops each of the towers. Its possible openings allow to preserve the views and dramatize life. Inside, prefabricated wooden cells for minimal lives welcome the inhabitants. Their arrangement regarding existing walls create networks of shared spaces. On the roofs, the veil protects an orangery and a playground. At the foot of the building it is the porous boundary between the hall and the garden. The immediate surroundings become agricultural land. On the ground floor there is an independent urban farmhouse. There is also a large shared kitchen, a space for awareness and initiation to land work. An orchard, as a playful garden crowns the project. The parking lot slab is pierced with 6 greenhouses. Light abounds there and taking advantage of its thermal inertia, an above-ground crop is developed. The vertical sculpture disappears in the urban fabric in favor of a programmatic life that extends horizontally.

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Projet suivant par nous. Guilhem Solère & Telmo Escapil-Inchauspé