© Julien Lanoo
The Quartier La Chapelle is located in the north-east of Paris. It offers a diverse and dynamic context for this student dormitory along the Rue Pajol. Three seven-story building volumes fill the previously vacant lot between the townhouses so characteristic for Haussmann’s Paris and adapt to their neighbouring buildings with their windowed facades and recessed rooftop levels. Together with the lower building parts in the rear of the lot, they enclose a square interior courtyard. The nearly black slate-coloured brick facade of the building parts facing the street contrast with the light larch wood cladding of the courtyard facade. The ceiling-height windows oriented towards the east are set flush to the exterior of the streetside brick facade. The windows of the western and courtyard facades are different; they are recessed towards the interior and feature deep window reveals clad in steel sheet metal. Two vertical gaps along the street facade and the open space in the building centre, which provides room for bicycle parking, permit deep views into the interior of the building complex. The central place serves both as meeting area as well as distributor that enables access to the vertical, open staircase cores situated in the four corners of the lot, designed as steel construction with metal grating. The altogether 143 furnished student apartments cover 18 m2 on average and include three different types.