This new 42,000 m2 park in one of the most underprivileged areas of Paris is a result of grassroots campaigning to provide the area with a quality public space. The presence of a sociologist in the design team, as well as the inclusion in the working team of the future supervisors of the area, has allowed the project to meet the residents' expectations.
(more...) 2 photos

Urban Design, an English journal dedicated to the analysis of current urban design, in its latest issue carries a review of the book published by a+t The Public Chance, New urban landscapes.
(more...) 6 photos

Last week we guided the students of the Nantes ENSA  (School of Architecture) through part of their study trip to Madrid.
(more...) 2 photos

The new pedestrian footbridge links the Bercy Park with the riverside and the French National Library. One single gesture serves to bring together the Library access plaza, the riverside walks and the park on the other side of the Georges Pompidou expressway.

The 304m long structure crosses the river with a span of 190m without intermediate supports and is made up of two elements which work closely together: a concave arch and a convex catenary. Both curves support pedestrian routes which cross over at the centre of the footbridge. Photos taken by Javier Arpa, available under request.

Dietmar Feichtinger Architectes.
(more...) 2 photos

Paris, the most densely-populated capital in Europe (20,164 inhab/km2)*, occupies land which has been filled up long since and walled off by its Boulevard Périphérique. The densities differ greatly between arrondissements, going from the 10,000 inhab/km2 of the 4th arrondissement to the 40,000 inhab/km2 of the 11th**.

To this can be added the inertia of its enormous historical patrimony, which could end up paralyzing it, and the sky high house prices, which have gone up by 40% on av.
(more...) 2 photos

Plataforma Arquitectura is one of the latinamerican most visited blog. Its aim is to spread Chilean and Latinamerican young architects' projects and generate discurssion about them, taking advantage of web 2.0.

Combarel and Marrec’s infill contains 17 apartments subsidized by the municipality. The building stands on columns above the parking lot on the street level (a rare typological innovation in the city) and its neutral glass façade in the midst of the stone and renderings of the traditional Parisian architecture.
(more...)

This building for rented social housing in Le Marais will make available to lower wage-earners a total of 11 apartments in a district where house prices on the free market are around 8,500 euros per m2 of usable area*.
(more...) 2 photos

This operation of creating a sponge effect on the fabric of the 11th arrondissement has allowed the opening of a 5,000 m2 public gardens on the site of municipal land. At one end of the site an apartment block with a nursery on the ground floor has been built.
(more...) 2 photos

Archidose, one of the most influential blogs about architecture, written by the architect from New York, John Hill, has dedicated a post about a+t's latest book: HoCo Density Housing Construction & Costs.

Last June the first phase of the transformation of the old Boucicaut Hospital was inaugurated, a scheme which intends to convert this 3 hectare superblock in the 15th arrondissement into an ecological neighbourhood. When the works are completed the new neighbourhood will boast social housing, private housing, facilities, gardens and stores.
(more...)

Living on top: the tower

Between 1945 and 1951, Mies van der Rohe built two 26-storey towers on the banks of Lake Michigan in Chicago. These two towers, numbers 860 and 880 on Lake Shore Drive, are two identical prisms, the direct result of an attempt to give shape to an idea, that of the glass skyscraper. With these two buildings, the progress of American technology can be identified with an architecture based on strict constructive principles, on slenderness and transparency.

Frank Lloyd Wright’s solo career starts in Oak Park, a Chicago suburb where the architect builds his own house in 1887. During the day, Wright worked downtown for Adler & Sullivan, while in the evenings he completed the design of residences in the surrounding lots of his neighbourhood. When the boss found out Wright was undertaking freelance commissions, he was invited to leave the company.
(more...)

When in 1830 the land of present-day Chicago was only made up of woods, prairies, marshland and rivers, nobody could have imagined that in the year 2010 lack of space would already be an important issue. This city, which owes its name to the Potowatami word Checaugau (wild onion), is divided into two neighbourhoods clearly differentiated by their density of land use: the financial centre or Loop and the residential neighbourhoods.
(more...)