Lourmel Student Housing
Site
Built in the 1960s, the existing residence is a product of that unique period when Paris was experimenting — on the fringes of its Haussmannian urban fabric — with architectural forms inherited from the “grands ensembles”. Located between Rue des Cévennes, Rue de Lourmel and Rue Lacordaire, in the immediate vicinity of André Citroën Park and the new Boucicaut eco-neighbourhood, the site occupies a strategic geographic position.
It forms a vast landscaped block on a concrete slab, conceived as an inner green heart, now designated as a protected green space and a discreet link in the green network of southwestern Paris. Surrounding this central void rise structures of a scale unusual for Paris: long, rectilinear façades — powerful, almost earth-like — forming veritable concrete walls. Their scale, continuity and orthogonal precision reflect an aesthetic of mass and order — inherited from a bold functionalist tradition — that dominates the garden’s landscape and strongly shapes its uses and perceptions.
Urban Integration
The Lourmel student residence is situated within this well-established complex, built on the site of the former parking ramp. The project introduces an intermediate space — lower in height and more fragmented — that slips between the large building façades without competing with them.
This fragmentation stems from a dual approach. First, it creates a contrast in scale and composition with the powerful orthogonality of the existing buildings: rather than a continuous volume, the residence is divided into four distinct, slightly offset blocks, whose positions break up the linearity of the surrounding façades and soften the sense of mass at the heart of the block. But this fragmentation is not merely a formal strategy. It responds to a highly constrained regulatory and urban context, marked by strict rules regarding sightlines and the proximity of neighbouring buildings.
The blocks turn, shift and sway so that each can find the most favourable orientation within the depth of the block. This precise adjustment opens up views, avoids overly direct confrontations, creates diagonal vistas and gives the bedrooms a more open connection to the outdoors. The project’s fragmented form thus becomes the visible expression of a quest for liveability: it transforms constraint into spatial quality by articulating regulations, light, views and privacy.
Urban Integration
The contrast continues in colour, with each volume asserting its own presence in an environment largely dominated by mineral uniformity. This differentiation is not merely a graphic effect; it makes the diversity of built situations — between the urban front, setbacks, thresholds and the relationship to the garden — clearly legible.
Finally, this strategy of contrast is accompanied by careful attention to the ground, transparency and landscape continuity. The project does not merely occupy an available site; it redefines the relationship between the street and the centre of the block, reveals the depth of the interior garden and contributes to the recomposition of a shared landscape. Lourmel thus functions as an intermediary element — at once architectural, domestic and landscape-oriented — capable of introducing a more human scale into a complex strongly characterised by mass, repetition and order.
Urban Integration
The project is not limited to the new building. It redevelops the entire courtyard and green spaces of the existing residence, which were initially underdeveloped and characterised by heavily sealed surfaces. In collaboration with landscape architects, the centre of the block has been redesigned as a full-fledged landscaping project.
Pathways have been reworked, plantings have been rearranged and the surfaces have been made as permeable as possible. Children’s play areas have been incorporated into the courtyard, giving the project a scope that extends beyond student housing alone. In this way, Lourmel enhances the living environment of the entire residential complex.
The landscape is not merely a decorative accompaniment to the building. It plays an active role in the transformation of the block by restoring a ground that is more vibrant, more absorbent and better suited to everyday use.
From the street
In its relationship to the street, the project takes the opposite approach to the logic of continuous alignment that characterises both the Haussmannian urban fabric and the neighbouring large housing complexes. Rather than fitting directly into the existing built environment, the volumes turn and shift to follow a movement that recedes towards the centre of the block. This slight twist in the building’s form reflects a clear intention: not to create a new building front, but to facilitate a transition between public space and the interior landscape. The fragmentation and misalignment of the blocks thus create a deliberate break in the street’s linearity, introducing a more porous, more open rhythm — in direct contrast to the long, continuous façades of the existing complexes.
This spatial strategy makes the existence of the interior garden visible from the public space and affirms a deliberate urban permeability. The transparency of the ground floor, the unobstructed views and the gradual setback of the volumes support the concept of an ecological corridor, extending the green network to the neighbourhood scale.
The project does not merely run alongside the street; it symbolically crosses it, inviting the gaze and living beings to enter the block. The tree-lined promenade that emerges between the blocks thus becomes a transitional space — both urban and landscaped — where architecture ceases to be a boundary and becomes a filter, revealing a new way of experiencing the street: one that is more open and more attuned to continuity.
Common Ground
The rooms are lifted off the ground, freeing up a shared layer that accommodates the residence’s communal facilities: the entrance hall, bicycle storage, laundry room, gym, workroom and cafeteria. The plinth is not treated as a simple technical base or as a circulation ground floor; instead, it becomes the place where the residence takes on a collective dimension.
The programmes are organised along a loop that follows the site’s changing elevations. From the street, the entrance and bicycle storage form the first everyday spaces. Higher up, above the ramp, are the laundry room, gym, coworking space and cafeteria. A staircase connects the latter back to the entrance, completing the loop.
This organisation gives the plinth a particular status: the different uses are not isolated but remain visually connected. Levels, circulation routes and programmes stay in constant visual relationship. Between the street, the garden and the rooms, the plinth creates an interior landscape — a thickened threshold rather than a boundary.
Facades
The façade is never merely a screen. In Henri Lefebvre’s words, it is a “moment of social space”: a place where perception, use and representation come together. In the context of large housing estates, façades have too often been reduced to neutral surfaces, repeated to the point of exhaustion, producing a visual monotony that ultimately weighs on the urban experience itself.
This project takes a different position, reinvesting the façade as a field of depth, shadow and rhythm. The repetition of the pattern — reminiscent of an architectural tartan — is not synonymous here with uniformity. On the contrary, it relies on a rigorous grid to create thickness, relief and a subtle variation in light. Shadow becomes material; setback becomes ornament. This approach echoes Gottfried Semper’s intuition that ornament is not a superficial addition, but an expression of construction itself and of its underlying logic.
Far from being applied decoration, the façade operates through layers, successive frames and controlled repetition, offering the city a vibrant and ever-changing reading, in radical contrast to the monotonous flatness of the surrounding buildings.
This position also challenges a simplified interpretation of Adolf Loos’s famous aphorism. If gratuitous ornament can be a crime, then the total absence of relief and nuance can constitute, at the urban scale, another form of symbolic violence. Here, ornament is reborn through shadow, depth and inhabited repetition, resonating with the thinking of John Ruskin, for whom the value of a building lies in the attention devoted to what is revealed to the eye, rather than what is concealed.
By assuming this responsibility, the project asserts that the quality of façades directly contributes to a more just and more generous form of urbanity. Attention to the exterior is not separate from the interior: it is its visible expression. A thick, articulated façade, attentive to light and views, announces living spaces designed with the same degree of care.
In this sense, the project acts as a missing piece of the urban fabric, capable of requalifying the image of large housing estates not through rupture or rejection, but through a rigorous reinterpretation of their principles. It proposes a renewed understanding of repetition: no longer imposed, but controlled; no longer monotonous, but inhabited; no longer massive, but profoundly urban.
Shared Spaces
The shared spaces form the invisible framework of the project, what Aldo van Eyck referred to as in-between spaces: spaces of the “in-between”, neither entirely private nor fully public, yet essential to the construction of social bonds. Too often reduced to residual or strictly functional areas, they are conceived here as genuine spaces of collective life — places where one does not simply pass through, but can pause, look and encounter others.
The entrance hall, circulation spaces, landings and staircases become generous, spatially layered environments, open onto the landscape and filled with natural light, extending indoors the porosity and depth developed across the façades.
This attention to shared spaces reflects a demanding conception of architecture as a framework for human relationships. Herman Hertzberger reminded us that “the quality of a building can be measured by the way it enables its inhabitants to appropriate collective spaces.” Here, circulation is not reduced to a series of corridors, but becomes a sequence of expanded spaces, offering views onto the garden, moments of visual relief and situations conducive to everyday appropriation.
The transparency of the ground floor, the continuous relationship with the landscaped ground and the visual continuity between inside and outside assert that collective life begins as soon as one enters the building.
More broadly, these shared spaces contribute to a positive reinterpretation of the legacy of large housing estates. Where such developments have sometimes produced anonymous, even deterrent collective spaces, the project advocates for an architecture of hospitality. By bringing quality, light and generosity to shared spaces, it asserts that the dignity of housing is not found solely in the privacy of the dwelling, but also in these intermediate spaces that shape a sense of belonging.
The shared spaces thus become the civic heart of the project: a place where the urbanism of mass housing is transformed into lived urbanity, and where the care invested in the interior is already made tangible from the moment the threshold is crossed.
Hanging garden
In this densely built-up block, every new structure alters an already fragile balance: the distances between dwellings, the views from the upper floors, the continuity of the green promenade and the perception of the block’s centre. The landscape thus becomes an essential condition for harmony. It is not merely a matter of incorporating greenery into the project, but of re-establishing a series of thoughtful relationships between the new building, the existing residences, the redeveloped courtyard, the student dorms and the distant views of Paris.
This attention to detail extends to the very form of the building. At the top, the volumes do not culminate in a single roof covering the entire footprint. Instead, they are fragmented into a series of landscaped landings, terraces and viewing platforms, each with its own distinct form, access and character. These surfaces are not merely technical roofs made green; they become true communal outdoor spaces — suspended thresholds where the residence takes on a freer, more open, almost village-like character.
The building’s upper levels thus take on a unique character. Students are not only in contact with nature from their rooms or the courtyard; they can access, within the very fabric of the building itself, elevated outdoor spaces that offer oblique views and vistas of the Parisian skyline.
The landscape is no longer kept at a distance, like a backdrop observed from the windows. It extends throughout the building, from the reimagined ground level to the green viewing platforms, and provides the residence with a series of intermediate outdoor spaces, situated between the rooms, the common areas and the sky.
CREDITS
Client: GECINA
Project assistance: THEOP
Construction Management: AURIS
Structural Engineering: Batiserf / CAP Structure
Fluids/Electricity Engineering: Choulet / Innovation Fluides
Economist: LTA
Acoustic: META
Landscaper: Bassinet Turquin
Construction companies: SICRA / ELIO / FERBO
