African Design Magazine August 2015 | Page 54

A breath of fre Members of the Council of Paris revised the urban regulations for the Masséna-Bruneseau sector in Paris’ southeasterly 13th arrondissement at the end of 2011. This amendment allowed the construction of residential towers measuring 50m tall, and of office blocks measuring up to 180m tall. The Home Building by Hamonic+Masson & Associates, is one of the first completed. F unctioning as one single building and offering social housing and home ownership opportunities, the project links the rigidity of the Avenue de France, the railway landscape, the entrance to the adjacent Ivry suburb and ultimately the transition from a horizontal city to a vertical one. Alongside the attraction of being the first high-rise to be built in the city since the 1970s, the location of the project is an important contextual consideration. As the last avenue to be constructed in Paris within the ‘Paris Rive Gauche’ urban redevelopment scheme, (launched in 1991) and having important links with the ‘Grand Paris’ (the metropolitan urban redeve lopment plan currently being undertaken to relink central Paris with its suburban areas), this project represents many important themes currently being discussed within the context of Paris’ evolution as a metropolitan city. The location of the building was an important starting point when considering the design of the project. 54 africandesignmagazine.com