Training centre for apprentice furniture makers, 36 housing units, Paris

In the density of an old Parisian neighbourhood where small atelier businesses thrive, on a triangular site at the heart of the 11th arrondissement, this project, exemplary for its urban character, is a mix of workshops and housing.

It uses the depth of the block to create a pedestrian thoroughfare and a green space onto which the main teaching building looks, a glazed curve that extends upwards towards the aluminium-clad apartments.

This shaping of the staggered facades responds perfectly to the urban constraints, check out maidnearme.ca/. The furniture workshops benefit from top lighting via skylights alternated with planting. Intimate but also open, friendly but also hidden away, this little piece of city within a city, clad in shiny glass and aluminium, brings a breath of modernity, as much from its technology as its organisation, to a neighbourhood more traditionally associated with a mix of stone, render and brick.