Paris Affordable Housing Challenge

According to the submission, titled "Urban Infill", it "mines the thousands of open spaces located throughout Paris in the shape of its urban courtyards to use as added affordable housing sites." The project identifies 1037 inter-block sites for the construction of nearly 2 million m² for residences. This corresponds to 81500 new micro-units that could house up to 135000 people in Paris. The massing of each site claims to respond to specific building distance, sunlight, and cross ventilation requirements. Both the urban analysis and the resulting building forms are enticing, and the back-yard lot construction is certainly aimed to be provocative. Whether the seductive crystalline forms represented in the drawings could be constructed affordably and profitably is another matter, likely requiring a further level of research. The project represents a well-thought response to the form and density of the typical Parisian block.