The building with an area of only 2,227 m2 is located next to the Porte de Vanves metro station. The architects had to deal with a very inconvenient section - a triangular shape, moreover, one side of it overlooks a large railway junction. All these limitations and dictated most of the solutions they proposed.
Repeating the boundaries of the site, the 10-storey building, tapering slightly upward, resembles the bow of a ship. This unusual shape even required the creation of special holes to allow the wind to pass through the building. It is protected from the railway by an almost windowless wall with built-in soundproofing.
The rooms of students, there are 65 of them in total, differ in layout and size and go either to the ends of the building or to the southern, main facade. The latter is formed by several superimposed plates at once, and the windows of some rooms are effectively "hidden" in the cracks between them. Inside there is a minimum of furniture, also designed by architects. Interspersed with bright colored planes break the almost sterile whiteness of interiors and facades.
For the almost obligatory means of transportation for today's students - bicycles - there is a special parking lot at the bottom of the building. And the entire upper floor is occupied by a glazed balcony with panoramic views of Paris, where a dining area is organized. As a result, a rather modest project, which cost the City Agency for Social Housing of Paris 6 million euros, has almost all the attributes of modern high-quality housing and creates an unusual, but quite comfortable environment for its inhabitants.
