House rue Robert Blache

Location: Paris, France

House area: 1,410 square feet/131 square metres

Description: Situated in central Paris, rue Robert Blache is part of a heterogeneous quarter between the Gare de I'Est and the Saint Martin Canal. The project consisted of building a four-story town house over an existing ground floor thus filling up the empty space between two existing buildings.

Its aim was to push the restrictions of the envelope allowed by the zoning regulations to the limit, to recover the orthogonal setting with the street and to bring natural light into the furthest corners of the house. Two white concrete volumes are attached to existing buildings and take on the rounded roof shape typical of 19th-century Paris.

At the centre of the house is a steel staircase contained in a deployed metal cage, which looks like an aviary. It divides the premises into rooms overlooking the street and others overlooking the courtyard, offset by half a level from the others.