ABSTRACT
Eden Bio is very close to the famous Père Lachaise cemetery. It is a quiet area with a diverse population – typically Parisian, with boutiques, small cafes and artists’ studios dotted around narrow streets. The site is enclosed by three streets, and was once an orchard and allotments. Paris Habitat, a supplier of social housing in the French capital, held a competition to design social housing in this area. Social housing and its position is a hot topic in Paris. Postwar Brutalist apartment blocks, originally designed as working-class housing on the outskirts of the city, have become ‘ghettoes’ of poorer families and immigrants, who have been pushed out of central Paris. The surrounding buildings vary in scale: they are sometimes five or six-storey town houses, and sometimes single-storey shops with homes above. They present a complete mix of materials: stone, brick or render, with pitched zinc or tile roofs and the odd flat roof.
