The reality of these times has helped us to arrive to a more global approach of the dwellings in the future. The main housing building of the ‘Plateau Central’ masterplan – the ‘Centr’Halle’- is raised in a neighbourhood mainly composed by an immigrant population and includes a marketplace on the ground floor.
The growing population and the changing economic situation brings us to a scenario of the house unit getting smaller and smaller; while the existing pandemic is making us reflect about how important it is to have an outdoor space where you can expand the limits of each home and enjoy open-air. Spaces are linked to the collective housing and allow conviviality and the feeling of being part of a community.
At ‘Centr’Halle’ Collective Housing and Market, the apartments are in the centre of a system which includes urban agriculture on roofs, terraces as common spaces for the neighbours, and the presence of a food market inside the volume of the same building – conceived not only as a commercial space but also as a community space and a tool for a larger social integration.
It also includes the new subway station ‘Clichy-Montfermeil’ part of Grand Paris Express, connecting with the Great Paris and its centre, the art centre ‘Villa Medicis’ where people can learn and practice urban art especially developed in these peripheries of cities, and the great fresco ‘Chroniques de Clichy-Montfermeil’ by the local-born but international renowned artist JR (Jean René), which will be applied in ceramics on the exterior wall of the metro station. The masterplan is enhanced by lively public spaces full of activities and by a green walkway (La Duise) that leads to a park.
Canopies, open activities, art, colours and soft architecture seem the best therapy for transforming a difficult periphery in a space that everybody feel as their own.
The experience of this periphery of Paris points out the fact that the activities linked with art, food and movement are increasing the narrow spaces of today’s private housing so that the neighbours can sense that outside space is also part of their home.
A market, therefore, seems to be a perfect scenario to achieve active
participation from the collective.
