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The Paris Affordable Housing Challenge winners announced

France Architecture News - Jan 22, 2020 - 11:47   4218 views

The Paris Affordable Housing Challenge winners announced

Bee Breeders have announced winners for the Paris Affordable Housing Challenge competition. The Paris Affordable Housing Challenge sought out conceptual ideas to solve the city’s housing crisis, looking for sustainable solutions that could be replicated in any location across the city of lights. 

The jury for this competition took particular interest in those projects that responded to Paris uniquely, showing an advanced level of urban, social and political analysis.

The first prize winner was also our student prize entry by Neno Videnovic from the Southern California Institute of Architecture in the USA. His Monumental Housing project focused on the fundamental structure of Hausmann-designed Paris. The project included 12 housing blocks designed to be dispersed throughout Paris as a new form of cultural monument, with each apartment clad in a perforated metal panel that replaces the human scale of the apartment with a unitless pattern that tends toward the sculptural. The proposal is quirky without being gimmicky, and the judges applaud its boldness.

The second and third place winners were also student entries, from Southern California Institute of Architecture and Politecnico di Torino respectively. Lourenço Vaz Pinto’s Urban Infil project looked to mine the thousands of open spaces located throughout Paris in the shape of its urban courtyards to use as added affordable housing sites. Meanwhile Chiara Quintanal Rivacoba and Bianca Ludovica Palmieri proposed a modified system of development for 9,000 logement sociaux, partially transferring the property rights to a ‘social owner’.

These entries varied greatly from each other but showed an enthusiasm and originality, analysing and re-thinking city-specific economic and political drivers of the city’s housing crisis.

See the winning projects below:


The Paris Affordable Housing Challenge winners announced

The Paris Affordable Housing Challenge winners announced

The Paris Affordable Housing Challenge winners announced

The Paris Affordable Housing Challenge winners announced

The Paris Affordable Housing Challenge winners announced

Images courtesy of the artist

1st prize and student prize winner: Monumental Housing by Neno Videnovic from the Southern California Institute of Architecture in the USA

Jury comment:

"Monumental Housing' focuses on the fundamental structure of Hausmann-designed Paris: landmark 'places' meant to serve as the key organizational elements of the city. Here, 12 housing blocks are designed to be dispersed throughout the city as a new form of cultural monument. Each block is to house a collection of new apartments. These are clad in a perforated metal panel that replaces the human scale of the apartment with a unitless pattern that tends toward the sculptural. The blocks are limited in their connections to the ground, to allow space for open public parks below. The project is reminiscent of Bernard Tschumi's famed competition-winning entry for Paris' Park de La Villette in the mid 1980's, in its application of a standardized sculptural element across the space of the city - a means for visual orientation and placemaking. The proposal is quirky without being gimmicky, and the judges applaud its boldness."

The Paris Affordable Housing Challenge winners announced

The Paris Affordable Housing Challenge winners announced

The Paris Affordable Housing Challenge winners announced

The Paris Affordable Housing Challenge winners announced

The Paris Affordable Housing Challenge winners announced

Images courtesy of the artist

2nd prize winner: Urban Infill - 1037 New Housing Sites in Paris by Lourenço Vaz Pinto from Southern California Institute of Architecture.

Jury comment:

"According to the submission, titled "Urban Infill", it "mines the thousands of open spaces located throughout Paris in the shape of its urban courtyards to use as added affordable housing sites." The project identifies 1037 inter-block sites for the construction of nearly 2 million m² for residences. This corresponds to 81500 new micro-units that could house up to 135000 people in Paris. The massing of each site claims to respond to specific building distance, sunlight, and cross ventilation requirements. Both the urban analysis and the resulting building forms are enticing, and the back-yard lot construction is certainly aimed to be provocative. Whether the seductive crystalline forms represented in the drawings could be constructed affordably and profitably is another matter, likely requiring a further level of research. The project represents a well-thought response to the form and density of the typical Parisian block."

The Paris Affordable Housing Challenge winners announced

The Paris Affordable Housing Challenge winners announced

The Paris Affordable Housing Challenge winners announced

The Paris Affordable Housing Challenge winners announced

Images courtesy of the artists

3rd prize winners: 9.000 New Social Houses for Paris by Chiara Quintanal Rivacoba and Bianca Ludovica Palmieri from Politecnico di Torino

Jury comment:

"This project proposes a modified system of development for 9000 logement sociaux, or social housing sites. According to this system, property rights are to be partially transferred by a property owner to a 'social owner', or property management entity. As a method of oversight, the process requires city hall to meet with both the legal owner and the social owner prior to the architect's submission of design documents to the council for approval. Projects are to contain socially-oriented community spaces as well as a for-profit commercial space, as a means to long-term profits that would incentivize social management or investment. The jury was supportive of this project, which analyzes and re-thinks city-specific economic and political drivers of projects. The entry intelligently adapts the popular graphic style of Paris city maps. The result is playful, positive, and convincing."

The Paris Affordable Housing Challenge winners announced

The Paris Affordable Housing Challenge winners announced

The Paris Affordable Housing Challenge winners announced

The Paris Affordable Housing Challenge winners announced

The Paris Affordable Housing Challenge winners announced

The Paris Affordable Housing Challenge winners announced

The Paris Affordable Housing Challenge winners announced

Images courtesy of the artists

BB Green Prize winners: La Ceinture Vivante - The Living Belt by Matt Sterne, Oscar Clarke, Ingrid Schwalm McEwan, Kate Schoonees

See more architecture competitions on WAC Competitions page. 

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