Christophe Colomb – ZAC Parmentier housings

The site is located on a busy avenue in an inner suburb of Paris, wedged between a sports stadium and a police station standing on the corner of a street and an avenue. The urban strategy consisted in building a base to extend the dimensions of the police station and to set businesses and offices on it. Two long buildings set at right angles to the avenue frame a building lot, thus creating urban continuity and a sort of internal square which should minimize the environmental nuisance of traffic noise.

In this project, Nouvel asserts ideas that he has previously developed in social housing : generously-proportioned interiors (“a nice apartment means a big apartment”), distribution along external landings, all apartments running from side to side to ensure cross ventilation (“important for comfort” ), and a wide choice of configurations and components (stairs, partitions, doors) that help personalize each dwelling.

Olivier Boissière in Jean Nouvel: Jean Nouvel, Emmanuel Cattani and Associates, Éditions Artemis Verlag, Zurich, 1992