In Paris a street corner is always considered an urban and architectural event.
With one expanse of façade overlapping another, the intersection’s image is enriched by treating a volume and attaining a complex composition. The positioning and advantageous standing of the two avenues that border this plot of land in the 13th arrondissement underline the phenomenon and gives its particular slenderness and monumentality to this residence for the elderly and Alzheimer sufferers.
The presence of a square and discontinuous low-rent housing steered the project to a particular expression of volume research. When the entrance hall appears, the core body volume begins a fold that opens onto a gabled wall and the courtyard of the low-rent buildings.
This angling avoids a «wall-like effect» on the street, opens to an empty inner space and accents the corner’s vertical elegance.
Playing on a single glass material, the base’s wall rises in a façade, fragments, deconstructs the gable wall’s thickness, refines and creates a singular outline. The building evokes a solid, chiselled mass that incorporates all of its walls’ shapes and distortions.
