© Bruther © Maxime Delvaux
On its own, a student dorm might seem a pretty banal commission – and a public parking garage even more so. But put the two together, along with the requirement that 50 % of the garage be “reversible” – i.e. that it could, at a future date, be converted to some other use – and you have a far more unusual proposition. This was the programme facing French architecture firm Bruther (Stéphanie Bru and Alexandre Thériot) and Belgian office Baukunst (Adrien Verschuere) when they teamed up for this hybrid building, located in the Palaiseau sector of France’s technology cluster, Paris-Saclay.