This project is part of the development of the Plateau Sud, along the chain of key sites set out in the urban and landscaping prescriptions. Within the setting of a coherent architecture, the project, which is based on the articulation of various parameters, connects the metropolitan scale of the site with a more intimate and domestic scale specific to housing.

To preserve the scope of the urban composition of the École Polytechnique district, the ensemble made up of the three distinct lots is envisaged as a vast block with a large courtyard crossed diagonally by gentle traffic. The Canyon, an element of large-scale urban composition, is accentuated by the gathering of most of the programme in a linear, stepped building that has been aligned with the northern limit. This building marks the perimeter of this large island and constitutes, in the heart of the right of way, a small-scale, more informal built environment that subtly qualifies the open, landscaped spaces on the ground floor.

These spaces are subdivided into several courtyards and gardens whose qualities are closely linked to the programmes that border them, from the most intimate in the heart of the island to the east, to the most public at the western tip of the right of way.

The plan’s contrasted organization is unified by the project’s architectural layout, which clearly distinguishes a base on R+1 common to all the buildings, composed of large porticoes of tinted concrete with an assertive texture, and a stepped upper body whose façades, also in concrete, are of a slightly pinkish grey, silkier and calept.

• Location

  Paris Saclay, France

• Client

  RSF

• Competition

  2013

• In collaboration with

  Bourbouze & Graindorge

• 51N4E involvement

  Full Process

• Construction costs

  16.800.000 €

• Programme

  Student housing 330 rooms, restaurant

• Site surface

  7000 m²

• Built surface

  11 000 m²

• Photography

  Filip Dujardin

• Image credits

  51N4E